It happened on August 31, almost 11 years since this all started, the day before my birthday. I got the takedown notice from the RIAA. We always knew that was a risk. Technically they're right. I probably was infringing on copyright but I hardly think it serves the artists I featured to remove my podcast. Piling on, my podcasting service totally abandoned me over separate issues. (Long story short, Podbean has absolutely zero loyalty for long term customers) Overall, it has been very frustrating, exceedingly disappointing, and basically just sad. Not only are the files not available for download anymore. The website itself isn't even up anymore so I'm not yet sure I can even record this message to share with listeners around the globe that aren't on this email list. I will try to figure something out as I continue fighting with Podbean but it's not looking good. It's kind of like the podcast never existed.
Tuesday, November 10, 2020
The Active Listener Podcast has died... :(
Over the last few months, I have explored a number of different options for how to keep the podcast going. The most promising was to simply move to Youtube. Often people have copyrighted material in their videos and they are allowed to remain up. They just can't monetize them, which you know is perfectly fine with me. However, I tried uploading some old episodes to Youtube only to find that some songs are entirely blocked so it doesn't seem like a viable long term solution.
One bright spot however, I was able to upload my 10 Year Anniversary podcast (UPDATE: this one has now been fully blocked) and my Dispatch focus podcast to Youtube! So those will be there, at least for now, though they do appear to be blocked in some countries or regions or something. Oh well. Perhaps, I can find other episodes to upload but it's a time consuming process. If you have specific requests, let me know. Of course all the playlists are also still up over at Spotify and I will continue to add to those but it's just not the same.
It's certainly tough to have it end this way but it really was a great ride. I can say that I feel like I documented everything about my own musical background and foundations that I had wanted to. There are no episodes from my past that I feel are unmade. It's only the future that's left, which is a good feeling. I also discovered so much good music. I learned of whole genres I didn't know existed like Afrobeats and the NuLatAm sound or whatever you want to call that Latin electronica (shout out to ZZK Records, Subsuelo, and the Peligrosa crew!!). And so many great artist discoveries, starting with Emancipator on episode 1! I even got my first tattoo thanks to the podcast. (I got the logo, which my wife designed, on my left side ribs)
But more important than all that, I made so many friends (many of you!!) and had so many great life experiences that just wouldn't have happened had I not made this podcast. And that was kind of the whole point from the beginning. when I was in grad school in Austin, and I found myself seeing incredible yet obscure artists play amazing shows at tiny venues on like a Tuesday night at 1am, but I was solo. After all of this, I did finally find a few partners who were also that into the music.
Love you all. Thanks for listening and don't forget to support the artists!
Aaron
PS.
A couple additional things just for housekeeping:
- I have archived all the episodes and their announcement emails on my computer so if you want any of them, just let me know and I'll get them to you.
- I have placed on Dropbox all of the studio mixes I made (sans voiceover). If you want the link just let me know and I'll hook you up.
- I've attached the full index of all the tracklists and songs that have been on the podcast of the last 11 years for reference. It's pretty incredible to look over.
- The original Blogspot blog is still up so I will post this message there. And I also published the whole podcast index there. Depending how the fight with Podbean goes I will likely redirect the main web address there. We'll see. http://
- The Active Listener Instagram is still up. Not sure what, if anything, I'll do with it since I'm kind of off the social media thing but maybe something will come up. Give it a follow if you're into that sorta thing.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment