Back in December 2004 I noticed a BBC article about podcasting and decided to delve into it a little bit more. I had always had aspirations to DJ but I neither had the time nor money to spend on two turntables and a microphone so this whole podcasting business intrigued me. I played around with creating a few music mixes using (in hindsight) some ghastly commercial stuff (which my friends wanted more of). I soon realised that this wasn't going to be sustainable for copyright reasons. I could mix commercial stuff in and have an audience of 30 or go legit and perhaps grow the audience somewhat. I soon started trawling MP3 blogs for music and emailing a few bands on Myspace and decided to call the podcast 'Not Your Usual Bollocks' or 'NYUB'. Within 4 months I had a small network of 'online mp3 hustlers' - PR and media people in London & Australia who promote up and coming bands using a roster of blogs. I also had my first band interview - Beatallica, who had recently been sued by Sony for covering several Beatles track, Metallica style. The band had a loyal following and a fair few of the Beatallica fans started listening to NYUB. Then in 2005, Apple announced that they would start offering a podcast directory in iTunes. I quickly submitted the podcast but I didn't hold out much hope of making the directory. 3 weeks later I was listed and by a stroke of luck, was put into the featured music podcast section for almost a year. This turbo-charged listenership with downloads averaging about 400 a day for a good 8 months. I recently lost my spot in iTunes due to more and more commercial podcasts creeping in but I'm not worried. It's been a truly fascinating ride. NYUB's been featured on msnbc.com, was nominated for best podcast of 2006 in the weblog awards and is still chugging along nicely.I recently joined Mog in an attempt to find a dedicated community of music fans to share my experiences and also find out what some of you lot are listening to. I tried myspace for but never got into it. Hopefully this will be more rewarding.Feel free to check out NYUB - www.nyub.net and let me know which music podcasts you are listening to out there.Take it easy,MK