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This post is going to be somewhat opinionated, so I shall hide most of it behind a cut.

So I’ve been hunting for perfect knitting podcasts. Or at least, non-annoying knitting podcasts.

For my preference a good podcast has to have a couple of characteristics: mainly, engaging host(s) with a pleasant voice, and a high knitting-content-to-noise ratio. So far the only perfect podcast I’ve discovered has been David Reidy’s Sticks and String. David has a pleasant voice, and being a teacher by profession, he knows how to speak clearly and engagingly. Each season of Sticks and String has an overarching knitting-related theme. Each podcast has an essay read by David himself, a review (of a book or yarn, usually) and often an interview, and some of his interviews have been fascinating; they’ve included knitting guild founders, alpaca farmers, other bloke knitters, and most recently a 15-year-old male spinner. He plays only one piece of music and it’s generally instrumental only, which makes a nice change (I dislike the kind of breathy-little-girl singers that lots of podcasters seem to favour!)

The perfect knitting podcast, for me, used to be Brenda Dayne’s Cast On. But I’ve become very much unfulfilled by it lately, and after listening to the latest one this morning, I’m going to unsubscribe. Brenda fulfils my first podcast need; she is engaging, and has a lovely voice which is pleasant to listen to. However, while Cast On used to be about knitting, it no longer seems to have the knitting-content-to-noise ratio I desire. Over the past few months it’s seemed to be less about knitting and more about Brenda herself. That’s fine, but not what I’m looking for.

The main source of my irritation has fired up two larger issues and some interesting personal prejudices, so it’s worthy of some exploration

Cast On is the only podcast I listen to which actively solicits donations from its listeners, as well as having sponsors. At first this didn’t bother me at all, but over the past few months it’s been actively bugging me. Brenda has been very clear about the reason she asks for donations; she regards herself as an artist, and she feels that artists tend to undervalue their work, and that her hard work to come up with a quality podcast should be compensated. This is where I begin to take issue. Why?

One issue is that I know I have issues with some artists. Some of this comes from my job, where I get the occasional extremely annoying and pretentious artist calling up looking for financial support. Don’t get me wrong; I feel the arts are an essential part of a healthy, creative, thriving society, and are worthy of support. It’s the attitude of a few individual artists I have encountered that bugs me - the attitude that, essentially, the arts is a higher calling than say teaching, or nursing, or emptying rubbish bins, and that I should treat them as rare and unusual creatures who can breathe only the most delicate of air. The truth is that I regard the arts as just as essential as teaching, nursing and emptying rubbish bins; no more, no less.

Another issue is whether a podcast counts as art. Work, yes; creative work, yes; but art? I don’t know. Where does art begin and end? Is designing a website art? Writing a blog post? I don’t have an answer to that, but it interests me that I evidently have some unformed ideas about what is art and what isn’t.

Third issue; Brenda has been encouraging other artists to “add a zero” or raise their prices by 10%, to adequately compensate themselves for their work. Bear with me while I explore this.

First, who’s to say that every artist out there is not currently being adequately compensated? I think encouraging everyone to “add a zero” just encourages the attitude that “No matter how much you charge, you’re worth it!”

Second… and perhaps most vitally… adding a zero to everything quickly raises the arts to the point where they are only available to the elite. And in a world where everyone’s an artist, and there are only so many purchasers of art to go around, there won’t be many artists who can make a living that way. A lot of people are going to fall by the wayside, because the average person won’t afford it. I know this sounds dangerously like “the market will provide” and I don’t think that’s right at all. I don’t think the market should be allowed to sort it all out.

Thirdly, in some ways, this goes against the very nature and passion of Web 2.0 which I’ve so come to embrace. I love that the Internet lets us share freely with one another. I am not creative in many ways; I don’t design patterns, I don’t do podcasts (although I’m so used to public speaking that I have considered it). But I contribute to the massive commune that is the Web in different ways. I answer questions on Ask Metafilter, particularly the ones where I have specialist knowledge - or indeed, I try to answer any questions I can answer if I see them posted somewhere. I have designed patterns in my, umm, crocheting past, and offered them freely. I use some of my free time to volunteer for a web-based organisation. I give, and I take, and that’s how I like it. I wouldn’t try to make a living from it, because it’s not feasible.

Mind you, I do pay for stuff if I think it’s worth it. I have purchased a HUGE number of patterns online, from “cottage industry” designers. I’ve bought handspun and hand-dyed yarn as well as commercial yarn. I donated to Ravelry as soon as I got my invitation, because I could see how much I would use it, how much work had gone into it and how useful it would be. If it’s worth it, and if I think the price is right, I will pay.

And here I come to perhaps the most critical part of this long post; I’m not going to donate to Cast On because I don’t think it’s worth it. There are an absolute crapload of podcasts out there which are just as good as Cast On, if not better, and they don’t have sponsors, nor do they ask for donations. Many of them are done by people who have full-time jobs and still manage to put together a top-quality podcast every week, or every fortnight. Now, the past two episodes of Cast On have been roughly 35 minutes long. Of those 35 minutes, we can deduct approximately 10 minutes’ worth of music; about 8-10 minutes’ worth of essays which are both written by, and read by, other people (not Brenda herself); and probably a couple of minutes of asking for donations and thanking the sponsors. We’re left with about 14 or 15 minutes’ worth of actual content delivered by Brenda herself. Frankly, I don’t care how much time it takes to source the music or choose other people’s essays; I don’t listen to the music anyway, and other people’s essays I can take or leave, because they are not why I listen to a podcast. I care about the knitting content. Cast On is so light on that, at the moment. What is the donation paying for, then?

Of course, that’s just one person’s opinion; I couldn’t do better (or rather, I am not willing to put time and effort into doing better) nor do I have the right to demand that something I’m not paying for be structured the way I want! But I do express my opinion. I don’t know whether to express it to Brenda or not. I don’t see why she would care about the opinions of one lapsed listener; it’s evident that a lot of people love her podcast, and find enough value to listen and to donate, and that’s great. I used to love it, but I don’t any more, and I don’t think it’s worth a donation. So I am voting with my feet - or at least with my lapsed subscription In the end, I guess it just comes down to personal preferences, and style.

Would I pay for any podcast? I don’t know. I might be willing to pay something for Sticks and String if it continued to maintain its high quality. Perhaps that’s the main thing; it’s very difficult for a podcast to maintain consistently high quality and good information without a lot of input from other people, as Brenda tried to inject with her other people’s essays. Even David uses a lot of interviews with other people, although I find them more interesting than the creative-writing type of essay Brenda uses. But I think that ultimately, if every knitting podcast started charging, I’d just stop listening to knitting podcasts, and continue listening to other types of podcast.

This week I’ve downloaded a whole lot of new (to me) podcasts to try them out. In the past I’ve dumped some for no other reason than that I found the presenter’s voice irritating. I’m so picky If you know a good one, please let me know; I’d love to try it out.