What happened to the Songfight podcast?

[Plat]

IIRC, Plat just made an RSS feed which downloaded everything off the Songfight servers. Any id3-tagging fixing was probably done by the podcast aggregator, many of which correct id3 tags on podcasts (though iTunes doesn't, and it can be kinda inconsistent about which set of data gets displayed particularly when an iPod is in the mix).

Wow, I just found this thread. Yeah, Fluffy's basically got it right. I figured nobody used it since I hadn't heard anything about it, and there was nearly no traffic after the first month or two.

I programmatically downloaded the MP3s, fix ID3 tags where possible, sometimes tag with art too, and upload them to a site where they get downloaded from. That's only done to fix the ID3 tags, and just in case, spare songfight servers from getting slammed. Of course, in hindsigh, the "slamming" part was a fals alarm.

The last time I checked, it appeared that ITunes did its own tagging of the song based on the RSS feed's information, so all that extra tagging went to waste for ITunes users. Other podcast-retrievin' apps didn't, though, so for those people the new ID3 tags were useful. This seems to contradict what Fluffy said, so I don't know if this has changed in newer versions or if I'm imagining the whole thing.

Anyway, as Jim already pointed out, I'm not keeping this maintained, so, especially if Spud/etc wants to do it, I'll be more than happy to transfer control as necessary. In the meantime, I'll set a cron job again to try to keep the existing feed up.

[Plat]

Should we make it one fight per feed, or the entire week's efforts?

For what it's worth:

When I last checked, by default, iTunes will only download the most recent MP3 on a feed. So if you're pumping out 20 songs at once, some people will only hear whichever artist was lucky enough to be at the top of that list. This can be changed by going to iTunes -> Preferences -> Podcasts -> When new episodes are available -> "Download All".

Some people won't have that setting, and if you're using it for fights on a voting week, this could give that artist an unfair advantage. It's also the song used as a "preview" track, which means potential listeners will base their opinion on the quality of the feed, on that track. There might be a way to specify a unique "preview" track now, but I haven't looked into it.

Regarding fights/feed, I had only one feed, containing only the songs being voted on, for all 2-4 fights. Previous fights weren't listed, so that if someone skipped a week or two, and chose to "Download All", that they weren't in for a hefty download of songs.

The feed's popularity came and went with the opening of the iTunes Store podcast section. A bunch of people subscribed initially, then a few weeks later usage went way down. I can't confirm, but think this has to do with how iTunes stops downloading feeds that you don't listen to.

Personally I'd like to see one feed that contains only the winners (maybe 2nd place) and fightmasters' picks. Basically, instead of using it for voting, use it as a retrospective of past winners. Yes, I realize that "most votes" doesn't mean "best songs".

While I'm at it, here's one more nuance of podcasted songs: in iTunes (maybe iPod too, I don't know), if you listen to half of the song, then listen to another song, and come back to the half-started song, it resumes right where it left off. I'm not sure whether I like this feature or not, but it's definitely different than playing non-podcast MP3s.

[Spud]

this links to iTunes where you can see the individual songs. I don't know Plat's RSS feed URL. But here's mine, doing much the same thing. Each song has its own "enclosure" tag. The songfight podcast simply creates new entries on the same day, so your feed client sees them all as new and will download them.

But it doesn't download them all, Roymond. At least, not in iTunes on my PC. I set my podcast setting to "Download All" and then subscribed to your podcast. It downloaded "Waterloo" and gave me a GET button next to the rest.

Am I doing something wrong, or is blue right?

[Plat]

But it doesn't download them all, Roymond. At least, not in iTunes on my PC. I set my podcast setting to "Download All" and then subscribed to you podcast. It downloaded "Waterloo" and gave me a GET button next to the rest.

My memory's pretty fuzzy but this sounds like how iTunes behaved for me too. Basically when you first subscribe you only get the most recent 'cast. But let's say you take a break for a few days, and Roymond adds 3 new podcasts to his feed. Then when you "Update" in iTunes, you'll get all 3 new podcasts, rather than the most recent 1.

BTW, here's the Songfight feed URL I was using.