iTunes Podcasting Isn't All Roses and Champagne

Reports are cropping up of podcasters getting server-slammed by the sudden deluge from iTunes. Dan York has a good description: “Kind of like the whole world of podcasting got a massive slash-dotting by Apple …” Dave Slusher raises soime other tech issues at Evil Genius Chronicles: iTunes links to his BitTorrent feed but doesn’t support BitTorrent and downloads are timed to hit in a way that could overwhelm a server. Says Slusher, “I had mixed feelings of a tiny bit excitement and mostly dread about the iTunes podcast support. It’s looking like the dread part was the correct response.” He’s considering asking that his feeds be removed from iTMS. While a number of his visitors are positive about iTunes or urge that he wait it out for an update to fix glitches as would be the case with other podcasting software, Slusher has a point when he reminds them: “the difference between any other podcatcher having issues in a 1.0 release and iTunes is that they’ve already got a deployed base of millions.” He also raises the idea that the iTMS experience is designed to benefit established media over grassroots podcasters. Not sure that’s fair but can see why it occurs to him.

Comments have been disabled for this post