Homegrown Podcast Donations Drive

Feb 21, 2011

Since beginning the Homegrown Podcast in November of 2005 I've produced 148 quality programmes featuring hundreds the best, strangest and gifted artists existing on the internet and beyond. All of these programmes have been lovingly created and produced by your truly. It's a time consuming process spanning thousands of hours to research, produce and keep going. I've resisted sponsorship and ads as I think they detract from the flow of the programme.

Since that beginning in 2005 I've been lucky to get complementary hosting for the podcast at Libsyn, a podcast hosting site that normally charges anything up to $20 per month for storage and syndication of the media. I've had this free service due to being a member of The Association Of Music Podcasting, a group of podcasters who produce mainly music based programmes. Now, due to changes in Libsyn's service they have decided to withdraw the free hosting from the end of this month. This leaves me in a bit of a pickle. I love producing these programmes, I enjoy finding new music and spoken word material for the listener ship and I hope that you as listeners in turn enjoy the podcasts.

I want to continue to provide this podcast totally for free. I think it's wrong to inflict monetary charges at this point as it is not in keeping with the ethos I have for bringing new material to as wide an audience as possible. Podcasting is a hobby for me, and therefore I am prepared to fund some money to pay for its up keep, however as the podcast serves a wider world audience I would hope that listeners would like to take some responsibility for it's continuation. This seems a fair deal when so many artists are benefiting from exposure on the programme.

The amount I need to fund a year of hosting is a minimum of $180 or around £110. Thats not a great deal and I feel that asking for donations from listeners would be the best way to secure some or all of this fee. I know that there have been thousands of listeners to this podcast over the years and I'm asking you right now for a little support, a bit of team work, you have been a great resource for donating music and poetry and now I hope you will help me to continue what I love to do, here in my corner of the internet.

During the month of March I will having a donations drive for Homegrown, I will producing as many editions of the podcast as I can, in return I ask you to give as little or as much as you can by clicking on the Paypal donations button at the top left menu of www.homegrownpodcast.co.uk

I hope that by the end of March I won't have to ask for donations again till next year, although the button will remain all year for continued support.

I appreciate your support and hope that you'll join me in supporting a truly independent, unique and enjoyable programme.