Music school offers podcasts of student performances in video, audio online

The IU Jacobs School of Music recently inaugurated a free podcasting service from the school's Web site.\n"Now anyone anywhere in the world will be able to obtain performances from the School of Music," said Gwyn Richards, the school's dean.\nThe School of Music, Richards explained, has been recording student performances since the '40s as a way to keep a record of music being produced by students. He said podcasting is simply an extension of that practice.\n"Our hope is that everything will be recorded," he said. "Now our students have a record of what they did here."\nBoth audio and video are recorded in high-definition and offered online with the highest fidelity possible. \n"The quality of podcast is pretty phenomenal," said Alain Barker, the school's director of marketing and publicity. "It's a great opportunity for people to check out (what the School of Music is doing)."\nKonrad Strauss, professor of recording arts, agreed.\n"There's a huge promotional aspect, but in addition, we can provide classical music to people at little to no cost," he said.\nStrauss, along with colleagues Travis Gregg and Wayne Jackson, oversees the recording of more than 700 performances each year and said he sees great potential in this ongoing project.\n"We'll be adding new episodes every two weeks, so we'll be cycling out old material," he said. "We hope that will get people subscribing to the site for regular updates."\nRichards said the podcasting project has been in the works for some time. \n"It was years getting the infrastructure to support it," he said. "Now, the equipment has gotten less expensive, and we've initiated discussions with manufacturers (for potential user agreements)." \nIt has also taken the past year to sort the legal complexities involved.\nStreaming video, Strauss explained, is considered comparable to live performance, so issues of copyright are covered in the school's contracts with the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and Broadcast Music Inc., which license the performance of copyrighted music. But downloading a podcast is considered a sale and is subject to royalty payments. For that reason, Strauss said, all the current podcast offerings are performances of works in the public domain.\n"Eventually, we'll just have to make our peace with royalty payments," Strauss said.\nThe podcasts can be accessed at IUMusic Live!, http://music.indiana.edu/iumusiclive. The podcasting service requires iTunes or similar software, but there is also material available for non-iPod users.