F H card letter b

Friday, October 19, 2007

The Greatest Soul Singer You Never Heard Of


Episode 43 of Dreamtime features Sterling Harrison, a soul singer who never quite made it out of South Central, but whose legacy lives on, thanks to Eddie Gorodetsky, Bob Dylan, and in a small measure, maybe even me. I also found one low-quality video of Harrison performing live at M&M Soul Food which I posted over at Dreamtime's sister site A Series of Tubes. To paraphrase Dylan, who was speaking on another subject, I figure if one person gets curious about Harrison and his music thanks to Dreamtime, I've done my job.

The podcast continues to pick up its Season 2 legs, the blog now getting about 4,000 visitors a month; somewhere between 100-200 a visitors each day. The shows themselves get around 500-600 downloads in the first couple of weeks of their release, and then hit a steady-state of around 50 downloads per month respectively thereafter. As far as I can measure: iTunes is a total black hole as far as measurement is concerned. But if I had to make a guess, I'd say Dreamtime had around 500 regular listeners, and wouldn't be shocked - gratified, but not shocked - if it had around 1,000. Much more than 1,000 and I would be shocked.

One of the things I want/need to do this year is improving - and then freezing, if possible - the podcast recording production values, which frustrate me no end. Every time I think I finally have the recording quality stable, it falls apart again in the next podcast. It shouldn't happen. The equipment and settings are the same. But one show I'll sound okay. The next as if I'm broadcasting from under a rock. I'm never going to have a radio voice, and I'm okay with that. But Jesus, I should be able to get a consistent recording.


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