Listen with No Rock: Tweeter's Tales

If you've ever been seized with a desire to want to know what I sound like, and don't have the sort of unfettered access to people's phones only available to News International journalists and the Met Police, good news: I've been given the honour of featuring in an episode of Tweeter's Tales, in which Rick and I swap tales of Tony Hadley, Alan McGee, and - inevitably - Bono.

Bookmarks: REM

If you have 20 minutes to spare, discover why REM's Out Of Time turned wasteful CD packaging into a solid piece of legislation. And what happened to the Longbox format. Pitch, the music podcast, explains all

Word back up

What's this? The Word podcast has sprung back into life, two years after the last emission.

The Primitives. They're back, you know.

You can hear the new Primitives single on the new How Does It Feel To Be Loved podcast.

The White whom?

[via @dickon_edwards]

Collins, Herring reunited

If you enjoyed Andrew Collins' Sunday programmes on 6Music, you might find yourself sometimes yearning for the stuff he used to do with Richard Herring. You'll doubtless be pleased, then, to discover that the feature has been reborn as a podcast.

Warning: We downloaded it to our iPod and went out for some so-so British Mexican Chain food, only to discover on our return that Lesley Douglas had broken into our house and was trying to replace the programme with fourteen minutes of George Lamb repeatedly bellowing "did you kiss him with tongues? With tongues? WITH TONGUES?" at Cat Power.

How much does it cost to adminster a podcast?

Now, we have no problems with people who make podcasts deciding they wish to be working on a commercial basis and charging a fee. What is a little odd, though, is the UK commercial radio's RadioCentre podcast pages, which offer a range of programmes charging what they call

a small administrative fee

That would be £12.75. Now, unless they're sending a bloke round your house to put the track onto your iPod for you, I'm at a bit of a loss to see how there could be £12.75 worth of administrative costs involved for every listener. If you're selling something, say so; don't pretend you're barely breaking even.

BBC smiles through its tears

You can almost hear the teeth grinding down Marylebone High Street as Danny Baker launches a non-BBC podcast. The BBC is aware of his work, says MediaGuardian's organgrinder:

Some controversy about Danny Baker's podcast on Wippit.com, which seems an almost exact version of his BBC London radio show but without any BBBC endorsement. The BBC's podcasts are all strictly run as a trail at the moment with only selected shows included, presumably so that the corporation can't be accused on treading on any corporating podcasting toes. Baker seems to have his own ideas, though.

The BBC said in a statement: "We are aware of Danny Baker's podcast on wippit.com and are confident that it doesn't use any content from his BBC London 94.9 show.

"As a freelance broadcaster Danny has a range of broadcast and publishing commitments besides his BBC London 94.9 show which we continue to review with Danny to ensure they don't contravene BBC guidelines."

To be honest, Danny Baker is still using large chunks of content from his old Radio 5 show, never mind from Radio London, and none the worse for that.

What might be galling for the BBC, though, is that Baker's podcast isn't merely a bunch of bits cut from the programmes, but is all new material. And it features music, too, unlike many of the BBC podcasts which function like those tapes you used to make of the Breakfast Show chart countdown, but in reverse: "the song is starting, press pause, quick..."

Of course, the BBC should snap up the idea and push ahead of it - but in an age when the BBC Trust seems desperate to think about things so long and hard they might go away, it's not going to happen. If the Corporation doesn't come to an agreement with labels about allowing people to download programmes with music soon, it's not only going to lose its audience, but much of the talent is going to head off and become micropublishers.