Questions & Answers

What does Odeo do?

Odeo has millions of mp3s from all over the web. You can download them to your computer or play them right here on our site. If you create an account, you can also subscribe to things and save the stuff you like. There’s also a link at the bottom of every page that lets you add more audio to Odeo if you like.

Can I get Odeo with iTunes?

Yes. You can get your Odeo stuff in iTunes by clicking the “Subscribe to your inbox in iTunes” link at the bottom of your playlist. iTunes will automatically update your newest Odeo items, and they will be available in iTunes and ready for your iPod.

Note: You can access additional settings in iTunes by choosing iTunes Preferences and clicking the Podcasts button.

How do I include a player on my blog?

Odeo has embeddable Flash players for just about everything. You can embed a player of your choice for a single audio, customize a podcast or starred audio player, and have the audio play automatically when the page opens. We give you the code to paste into your blog, website, or MySpace and voila! You’re done. If you’ve got questions, ask us.

Do I need an iPod?

No. In fact, you don’t even need an MP3 player at all. You can listen and participate just with your computer. But if you have an iPod or similar device, you can listen on-the-go.

What's with the high speed playback on some audio?

You’ve been chipmunk’d! Sometimes the Macromedia Flash player has a hard time dealing with files that are encoded at a rate that is not a multiple of 11.025 kHz. The result is what we call the “chipmunk” effect. When you download the file, it will play normally on your computer or device. Note to audio creators: Avoid being chipmunk’d by encoding MP3’s at 11.025 22.05 or 44.1 kHz.

What if I already have a podcast?

If you’re already a podcaster, great! We’re here to help you get more listeners and more stats—and to keep you in control. If your feed is already in our directory, make sure to claim it (look for the little “Claim It” link under the podcast description.) If you don’t find your channel here yet, add it here.

Do I have to buy iTunes? Do I have to use it to use Odeo?

No. You can use Odeo straight from your web browser. If you want to use iTunes, it’s a free download for Mac and PC users. You don’t need to own an iPod to use iTunes either, you can use it to manage your music and other media on your desktop.

How do I add a feed?

You can add a feed here:

http://www.odeo.com/create/import-feed

This is also a good way to find your feed if you think you added it, but you’re not sure. Adding a feed creates a new channel with a small “claim it” link, or an “already exists” link if the feed is already in our directory. Clicking on this link will take you to the feed’s channel page. If you produce the feed, you will want to claim it in order to have editorial access. Clicking on the “claim it” link will lead you to the feed claim instruction page. If you have problems claiming the feed, write support and we’ll help you out.

Can I Use My Phone to Record MP3s?

Odeo does not support phone posting. There are other free services that are compatible with Odeo such as Supcast, Gcast, and for international phone posters, Gabcast.

What is a Playlist?

Your Playlist is where all of your audio goes. If you subscribe to podcasts, the newest episodes appear automatically. If you’re browsing Odeo and find something you like, click ”+ playlist” to save it for later. Your playlist has an rss feed, so you can sync with iTunes or set up automatic downloading.

How often does Odeo check for new podcasts from feeds?

Currently the update time is about 3 hours.

What is Podcasting?

Wikipedia says that “podcasting allows individuals to have a self-published, syndicated radio show.” That’s one way to think about it but you don’t have to have superstar aspirations. Podcasting can also be thought of as casual content creation; just a fun way to communicate with friends, family, or colleagues.

This file can't be found?

Some podcast publishers (such as the BBC) only keep their audio files online for a limited period of time. Odeo simply points to the files, rather than serving them ourselves, so when they’re taken offline, you get “this audio file can’t be found” in the player or a bad link when you try to download it.

We do routinely check to see if files in our directory are still there, but there’s often a lag between when it’s been removed, and when we notice it’s been removed. (We’re working on reducing this lag.)

Does Odeo have a web services API?

Not yet but we are planning on launching a web services API to allow you to build things off of Odeo. Once our API is ready we’ll let you know and post an example application.

Do you have a pinging service?

Odeo has a service for podcasters who want to ping us when they post a new show. We use the same ping standard as blogs with an xml-rpc ping format as well as a newer REST based format.

Ping from the web: odeo.com/channel/ping

For the xmlrpc ping use the rssUpdate method to call this url: http://odeo.com/api/xmlrpc/1.0/ping

For the rest ping use this url: http://odeo.com/api/rest/1.0/ping?u=http://yourpodcast.com/feed.xml