So this week it finally happened; the Danny Baker podcast went to subscription only.
A bit of background. Danny Baker’s been on the radio for years. In 2005, after a good stint on breakfast on BBC Radio London, he won the Sony Radio Award for DJ of the year. He promptly quit, returning to the station six months later to take over the drivetime (well 3pm-5pm) show.
Baker devotees have consistently listened to the streams of these shows, and certain websites link to torrents of these programmes converted to mp3s.
Fast-forward to earlier this year, when Baker met, through very strange circumstances involving him inviting random listeners to help out on his show, Paul Myers, founder of Wippit, a music download service.
Baker was persuaded to give podcasting a go. So while he kept doing his BBC London show, he started doing a second, largely musicless podcast version of the show which is kept entirely separate from the BBC. The internal politics of his being able to do this are curious. His BBC London show is not available as a podcast – podcasting is still an experimental service at the BBC. And it turns out that Baker actually has no contract and is paid on a show by show basis. So Baker just did the show.
Wippit has built him a studio, and he does the show with his regular retinue of Amy Lamé, Baylen Leonard and David Kuo one or more of whom may appear on each show.
The podcasts were successful, but it was obvious that they were being done with a view to being charged for at some point – these people are giving up their time, they’re not necessarily all really wealthy, and if the show was going out on radio, they obviously would be paid.
So after an August largely spent on holiday, this week saw the first of the new “in colour” paid for episodes.
The deal was that you could buy a week’s worth of shows – each running around 45 minutes – for £2. Is this a good deal? Should I subscribe?
It’s been pointed out to me that £2 a week for 52 weeks is only £31.50 less than a full BBC TV licence, and I obviously get more than a single 45 minute radio show a day from the BBC.
The nearest comparison I can make is the Ricky Gervais podcasts. He too initially launched them free, with The Guardian, where they immediately caught fire, and were soon topping the iTunes charts (not that it’s ever too clear exactly how those charts are determined – but they’re the best measure we’ve got). Then Gervais did a deal with Audible, and the next couple of series were paid for via that site. The price was around 95p an episode, and at the time I decided that I wouldn’t subscribe. As well as having an issue with incompatibility with my then mp3 player, I just didn’t feel like I was getting value for money from a largely unscripted and easily produced show. It felt like three friends – talented and funny friends, certainly – were just sitting around a microphone shooting the breeze.
Is the Danny Baker show different? Well, yes. They’ve prepared material in advance, and there’s greater interaction with the listeners. Yes, it is still effectively a paid-for radio service, but at 40p a show it doesn’t feel to pricey. And I could take up their subscription offer at £4.95 a month (or £50 a year) which obviously reduces the cost even further.
So I decided to buy a week’s worth. That’s where my troubles began. Maybe the Wippit site is being so overwhelmed this week that they can barely cope with Baker subscribers, but I had an experience not dissimilar to Mark Lawson’s attempt to buy Setanta.
First of all I had to contend with registering. This gave me lots of server-crash error messages and failures. I actually gave up at this point and came back the next day, to have another go, with very similar results. Then I discovered that I had somehow registered because my email address was already on their system. Recovering my password failed repeatedly, but I finally managed to get into the system.
I found the programmes I wanted and tried to check out. I got to that point where you press the button and your card is charged. I got a blank screen. Sure, I could go back, but I didn’t want to get charged twice. I checked my account history and discovered I’d been charged £2.08. The 8p was a transaction charge that I hadn’t previously noticed. It might only be 8p but come on, build that into your overall price – Apple manages it should I buy a single track for 79p.
I managed to finally download the three shows so far this week, but the downloads weren’t speedy, and there was no indication of the file size as I embarked on the download.
Overall the website feels flaky with pages not loading properly. A really disappointing consumer experience. A friend similarly went through an awful experience buying the shows, taking a full hour to get the programmes to download.
None of the music download services I’ve used are that great. Apple has the benefit of its own application to let you buy the music, but it can be difficult to navigate, and slow to load. eMusic is fairly fast and easy to use, but finding the music you want (ignoring the general availability of albums you’d like) is difficult. Audible is opaque at first, but you eventually find your way around satisfactorily, even if it sometimes takes you multiple button presses to get to where you want to end up.
But Wippit has to be the worst. They need to get some designers and engineers in to make the site more robust. They’ve got the content, but that’s only part of the consumer retail experience. If I hadn’t really really wanted to try the programmes, I’d have long given up on this site.
And I haven’t even listened to the shows yet!
[UPDATE]
Obviously Wippit has been struggling. Last night I got an email directing me to a different server that’s solely for downloading the Danny Baker podcast. That worked a lot better.
[UPDATE 2 – 23 October 2007]
I had an email from Wippit yesterday letting me know that the ADBS is back from Wednesday 24 October. There’s a ten minute special in the meantime which sort of explains what the problem was. Interestingly, Baker’s talking about “winding down” his BBC London show.
The big question is this: has the Wippit sign-up procedure improved in the intervening month or so?