Everyone – I love your shows, when I can find them on my music player. The is a request for some naming consistency in your files and the Song Name*. You may have the show name in the Artist or Album, but sometimes if listing by song name all I see is a bunch of numbers with tracks mixed with others tracks. I have the iPod Photo which has more information (a few more lines and a few more characters) in the display, I can’t imagine what others are seeing (or not seeing).
When the file name or song title starts with a number it just sorts with all the others with the same numbers. Then we can’t ever find anything. Starting by month is confusing too, for example: my November “ESC Radio” just mixes in with my November “Gilmore Gang”.
When this is really an issue is when I’m trying to show someone else “something cool” but end up not finding it. They aren’t very impress or encouraged to buy anything (or buy in to podcasting) at that time. I want more people to be geeked and excited about this!!! I’m certain you feel the same.
My suggestion (which is really only pointing out how others are already doing it): Something short to designate your show and then the date or episode number and then the title of the episode if you have one.
Just ABBR-YYMMDD (abbreviation, and 2 digits each for year month and day) would probably be enough (we’ll worry about the Y2100 problem later…) and then anything extra could be appended.
Some of these may just be iPod issues. Maybe even more so of an issue when viewing the AAC files in the AudioBook mode (since it lumps all the files together, hopefully Apple will address this). But even some of the sites that offer the feed in a AAC (mp4) format are some of the more difficult ones to find due to nameing. Some sites have no system, NASA names everything story.mp3 and then something nicer (sometimes) in the song name but sometimes just “NASA story”, Adam has mentioned this over at the Daily SOurce Code.
I’ll take feedback on this, maybe I’m missing something… I do know I see everyone is doing it different, maybe for no reason, maybe there is a reason.
FYI – I’m trying to work the bugs out in the naming myself before I start my podcast later this month. :)
* I say the Song Name because that seems to be the way my iPod/iTunes (and we are “podcasting”) seems to list by default. Especially in Audiobook mode (so I can bookmark my place), all I can see is the song name.
Hear, hear. How hard can it be to choose a naming convention and stick to it?