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.

One important note: from the beginning, Ibbott has been careful to work as necessary with “rights holders” through ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC – he even moderates a forum at podcast alley on using licensed music.

Recently, as the economy has depleted sponsorships and advertisers, it’s become more difficult for Coverville to make money. Rather than just folding, or moving all the way to “pay subscribers only,” Ibbott’s created a new offering: Coverville Citizenship.

Coverille Citizenship

Coverville Citizens get:

• a DVD each year of the previous 100 episodes (more than a year’s worth)
• a limited edition T-Shirt not available to non-citizens
• a subscription to a premium ‘bonus tracks’ podcast including tracks not used in the show
• the good feeling that comes from being part of something you enjoy and helping to support it

For which they (myself included) happily pay $40.

Is this the future of media?

A niche producer (though it feels odd to me to call cover songs a niche, since the genres Ibbott includes are so broad, he did identify and develop a specific hook or angle that was unique) connects to a long tail of fans, many of whom are casual fans dipping in and out, but a number of which are more devoted fans (in the case of Coverville those fans make suggestions, record trivia quizzes for Ibbot and wife Tina to play, phone in dedications, record intros for the annual countdown, and so on). Those devoted fans are willing to pay for premium access to bonus content.

Would it work if a mainstream media outlet tried to replicate it? I wonder if the producers or execs at such a company (could be radio, tv, film studio, whatever) would have the patience to let the show (and it’s audience) develop. Coverville’s almost 5 years old now – the first episode was in September of 2004 – and I’m not sure how early in the process the audience began to reach the levels an ROI focused company would require.

Would they be willing to let the host be so authentic and personal? Involving his wife and son in the show, doing the trivia bits live, and being willing to totally flub an answer (though of course he generally does quite well)?

If they would, maybe we’d stop hearing about how people online won’t pay for content . . .

If you’re not familiar with Coulton, two quick gems. First, Code Monkey:

Second, his great cover of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s Baby Got Back:

In the interview (transcript here if you prefer reading to listening – I’m quoting from the transcript), Coulton talks about his use of social media to create direct relationships with his audience, and why some approaches have been more effective than others:

Facebook and Myspace are essentially duplications of my blog and my email which I already have a blog and email so you know, I don’t, I sort of don’t understand why bands use something like Myspace unless the answer is they can’t, they don’t know how to make their own website

Guess it helped that Coulton was originally a software developer. More to the point, Coulton identifies the risk of closed social networks and cloud platforms:

I was always suspicious of Myspace because for the very simple reason that you don’t have direct access to your network, you only have it through Myspace. If Myspace ever goes away your network winks out of existence, you don’t have your emails you don’t have any way of getting in touch with them. You are completely dependent on Myspace.

And you know you look at what happened with Friendster you know, guess what social networks rise and fall pretty quickly. That what happened with Friendster and it’s sort of what’s happening with Myspace I guess and no matter how great and eternal you think a social network platform is it’s an illusion it’s going to go away. And so to spend all your time building up this Myspace network is I think has the potential to turn out not so well.

Well put. I also really liked his point about creative commons licensing, which he leveraged very effectively early in his (recent) career and continues to use:

. . . you know it was kind of a scary thing but I really just rationalised the thing, well let’s just get the attention now and worry about making the money later, and you know, if the worst thing that happens is a million people get one of my songs for free, like you know, that’s okay, that something I can build on. And I would rather have that happen than make $15 from my friends who buy it and nobody else can hear it, you know.

The interview also touches on Eventful, rickrolling, Wil Wheaton, Ze Frank, podcasting in general, YouTube, and (of course) Twitter.

Well worth a listen, especially but not exclusively if you’re and independent musician or wanna-be independent musician.

Head over to GetMiro and download the Public Preview 1 (v. 0.9.8) release.

Miro is available for Windows, Mac OS X, and pre-packaged for a number of Linux distros (Fedora, Ubuntu, with Debian and Gentoo coming soon) as well as source code for the true DIY.

Miro lets you:

• Play virtually any video file, across different platforms
• Download and play full screen, high definition video
• Subscribe to video podcasts, video blogs, any rss feed with enclosures
• Locate new video content using the Miro channel guide
• Download videos from YouTube, DailyMotion, Google Video and others
• Download BitTorrent videos and watch them in the same application

Miro’s based on the Mozilla XULRunner framework, and is an excellent example of cross-platform, non-proprietary alternative approach to taking Internet-based applications beyond the browser context, without losing the open, standards based approach that made the web successful in the first place.

In Jeff’s description:

In this podcast we discuss some of the details behind the Liferay-Alfresco-Roller solution Optaros recently implemented for one of our clients . . .

Or Ian’s:

Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 are hot on everyone’s lips at the moment. In this Podcast I interview Jeff Potts, of Optaros, about an Alfresco application they have delivered that brings together:

• Alfresco outside the firewall
• Alfresco inside the firewall

• Alfresco for document management
• Alfresco for Web Content Management

In this Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 project, Alfresco is integrated with:

• Portal – Liferay
• Blog – Roller
• Tagging – Alfresco

Specifically we discuss:

• The goals of the project
• Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 and characteristics of these types of projects
• The components used in the solution
• The consumerization of IT – Web 2.0 Components within the Enterprise
• How to find out more