State of the Show: December 2022

December 20, 2022

Hello skillets,

We’ve expanded the range of places where you can find Cast Iron. We are now available on Amazon Music and Spotify. We’ve also updated the feed on Google Podcasts, which should populate with all our recent episodes in the coming days. There are links to major providers at the top of this page. We recommend you use a nice podcast player such as Overcast or Castro – if you’re still using Apple Podcasts, you don’t know what you are missing!

We are also working on a Cast Iron YouTube channel. When we uploaded the Holy Diver episode as a test run, it was immediately blocked worldwide due to three copyright strikes (against the three singles: Holy Diver, Stand Up and Shout, Rainbow in the Dark). We can get around these strikes by muting the offending music, which is cumbersome for us and a shitty listener experience for you. Assuming this process works, we’ll gradually upload the old archive to YouTube; new episodes will arrive at the same time as their audio podcast pals.

We think our usage of short song clips as part of a larger work of commentary and criticism, which we never have and never will monetise, is a textbook example of fair use. Unfortunately, YouTube’s fair use appeal process gives decision-making power to the copyright holder. If we appeal these copyright strikes, our appeal will be rejected, and we don’t think that is worth the effort.

In future episodes, we will experiment with shorter song clips and see if this avoids a copyright strike. We don’t want to change our formula too much to suit YouTube’s copyright detection mechanisms, but this seems a pragmatic solution.

Have a heavy metal Christmas and a rockin’ New Year.