Coverville Citizenship and the Future of Paid Media

Given all the raging debate about paid media online – whether users (or consumers, if you prefer) will pay for access to content, whether paywalls and micropayments have a place, and the like – it’s refreshing to see an independent podcaster demonstrating the value of well curated content and the willingness of folks to pay for it.

Coverville's Original Logo

Coverville is a podcast hosted by Brian Ibbott and recorded in his home near Denver, which features cover songs and the topic of covers generally. He does a fantastic job, hosting theme shows like originalville (in which he plays the original versions of songs people mostly know by a famous cover) and cover story (in which the whole episode is devoted to covers of and by a specific artist). Check out the Wikipedia entry on Coverville for a sense of how popular the show’s become.

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Save Paste and the future of publishing?

I’m a big fan and subscriber of Paste, an independent U.S.-based monthly (now shifting closer to bi-monthly, with every other issue being a single-topic special edition) magazine focused on music, film, and books, with a passionate spirit.

Currently, however, they are running a Campaign to Save Paste, soliciting donations to offset operating losses. What does the need for such campaign tell us about the future of online publishing?

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Code Monkey Go To Job

This summer Tara Hunt of HorsePigCow interviewed Jonathan Coulton. As a fan of both, I downloaded the podcast for later listening and then forgot all about. Finally got around to that “to listen to later” folder this morning, and would encourage you to check it out.
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