Iowa-based laptop ambient/electronica musician has hit podcast

Mark Rushton started podcasting his original ambient/electronica music in late 2004 after realizing that promoting his music via college and public radio stations was a dead end.

"I got a number of plays here and there, but it really wasn't worth all the effort and expense that I put into it," said Rushton. "I suspect that most of the CDs I mailed out ended up in the garbage."

One day in late 2004, Rushton read a story about podcasting and everything clicked. Even though he didn't own an iPod, Rushton had utilized mobile music solutions such as XM Satellite Radio, MiniDiscs, and burned CDs for portability. He learned what he could about XML, audio editing, and put together some early shows on a site he has since retired.

"It was my old Hooray For Vouvray web site," says Rushton, "I had over 7000 downloads in the first six months I was podcasting. It was getting huge."

Rushton decided to scrap Hooray For Vouvray and consolidate everything at his MarkRushton.com web site during the summer of 2005. While that briefly killed momentum, things picked up quickly when the music program iTunes received podcasting support.

Another favorite of Rushton's is Feedburner.com, which tracks subscription numbers and hits to his free podcast. While Feedburner doesn't track all of ways people can subscribe to his podcasts, Rushton estimates at least 75% of his subscribers find out about his music via iTunes and Feedburner.

The latest podcast, a program featuring a single 34-minute piece of music recorded live in mid-September, has been downloaded nearly 500 times in the first two weeks of being available. A podcast Rushton put out in June has received nearly 2000 downloads in three months.

"There's no way radio would have played me that much," says Rushton, "and even non-commercial radio would have completely ignored a 34-minute long improvised ambient/electronica piece that was performed live."

A byproduct of all this exposure is that numerous people have been asking to use Rushton's music for commercial and non-commercial uses. While an ASCAP member since 2002, Rushton has needed to hastily add music publishing to his business interests, something he hopes to have completed within the month.

So what does the future hold for Mark Rushton and podcasting? Rushton is very optimistic: "I'm always happy when anybody downloads my music for free, and even happier when people buy my paid iTunes downloads and CDs. That hundreds of people are downloading my music and subscribing to my podcasts at this very early stage of the game only means that the numbers will continue to climb over the next few years. I can't imagine thousands or tens of thousands of people worldwide listening to my music on a regular basis, but within a year it's probably possible."

MarkRushton's podcasts can be downloaded for free at http://podcast.markrushton.com or you can subscribe via itunes at http://itunes.markrushton.com