The goal of this episode was simple. Find out what happened to Zune.net and podcasts on the Zune Marketplace.
To achieve this goal I went straight to the source. I talk to Rob Greenlee the Project Manager for podcasts on the Zune Marketplace.
If you listened to episode 065, you heard me say that links to Zune.net and your show page on the online catalog of podcasts on Zune were dead. Yep, despite Rob’s efforts, Microsoft killed Zune.net and with it, all our links to our show listing via the online catalog.
It appears that Microsoft felt this was no longer a necessary resource and decided to get rid of it. It also appears that they are slowly fading away the Zune brand in favor or Windows Phone and Xbox.
The good news is podcasting is not dead on Windows devices. The Zune Marketplace still exists and so do your podcasts on the platform. The only thing we’ve lost is the website where you could see your show listing.
In more encouraging news, podcasts will be native to the Windows Phone 8. When someone buys a Windows Phone 8 device, they will see an option for podcasts. This should lead to more discovery of podcasts by those who aren’t currently listening or watching. However, the same can’t be said for Windows 8 desktop. There is currently no support of podcasting on that platform. I am starting to see third party applications being developed to solve this issue.
On this episode, Rob dives into the history, status and future of Zune and we learn some interesting things about podcasting in the eyes of Microsoft.
If you need your podcast put onto the Zune platform or need to make a change to your current show, Rob is a great resource. Unfortunately his easy to remember email address that we all used to use to contant him went away with the Zune.net site. So no longer can he be reached at Rob@Zune.net. To reach Rob, please use his new email: podcasts@microsoft.com. Or you can tweet him via @RobGreenlee.
Leave a comment telling me what you think about the status of podcasting on Windows. Are you concerned? Do you think it’s imperative that a large media company like Microsoft have it’s own podcast catalog?
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