Adam Curry has discontinued the popular Hit Test from his podcast; Hit Test used mashed up mainstream music and challenged the listener to identify the mashed tracks. Apparently, warning s from content owners got to be too risky to resist, and the series was killed. the Hit Test producer, Jan Polet, claims to have created 82 episodes with 262 tracks. In his blog comments, Adam says: "I was hoping the copyright holders would see the benefits to licensing to podcasters, but it seems unlikely now. I'm pro-copyright, but a dissapointed podcaster. Not a problem though, enough Podsafe out there to turn me on."
1. Not sure why Adam can't license his music. In a conversation I had six months ago with Brian Ibbott of Coverville Brian took the steps necessary to license music to play on his podcast. At that time some of the licensing agencies were still working out the podcast-music issues, but were willing to issue a license which makes him legal. Is Adam too cheap (it costs $700-$800 a year for the licensing) to license copyrighted music? I don't get it. Or is there something else going on here that doesn't meet the eye?
Posted at 5:58AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Tim 'Gonzo' Gordon