This American Life Podcast
The podcast for the popular NPR series This American Life allows listeners to download the the shows and listen to them whenever they want. The podcasts can be streamed for free online. However, if you are interested in downloading the podcast to your computer, the option is only available for one week beginning on the Monday after the particular episode airs. Otherwise, you can buy individual episodes and download them to your MP3 player using iTunes for $0.95 per episode.
We feel that the podcasts should be freely available for an unlimited time since NPR is supported by the public and by federal dollars. The days of free podcasts may be numbered if the rest of the podcast providers follow in This American Life’s footsteps. If podcasting is adopted by more large corporations, the face of podcasting is likely to change to one where a profit plan is required.
However, with the emergence of internet-ready phones with MP3 players such as the Apple iPhone and the Nokia N800, listeners won’t have to worry about paying to download episodes since they can directly stream them to the phones using the web browser.
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