On a recent Gilmour Daily podcast, Steve Gilmour and Doc Searls discussed DRM.

During the conversation, the concept of triggering the memory of a commercially encumbered work in the listener, as a way of by-passing the music companies stranglehold on distribution, was suggested.

AKA. The all-too-familiar tune in my head solution.

Could you trigger the memory of the song, without actually distributing it and avoid paying the music companies.

As usual I jumped in the shower and my brain would not let go of the issue at the heart of this problem.

What if, creators were able to embed tags as bookmarks throughout a podcast? Perhaps ID3 tags as bookmarks?

Essentially, tag the podcast with what they were thinking, intending or expecting listeners to hear (feel?) at precise points in the recording.

As the podcast played, the playback application would locate the relevant track based on the tag, inserted it or play it at the intended location, and then pick-up right where it left off after the new content was inserted.

With a vast amount of content already distributed to billions of devices and households, in the form of CD collections ripped to disk and content purchased legally, why not take advantage of the material residing locally?

Player applications, like iTunes, could be tweaked to scan podcasts for these tags and pre-load/mix content before or during playback.

Syncing applications could do the same for detached devices like iPods.

Recording applications could automate the process, by creating these tags or bookmarks, as the intended material was queued during recording or in post-production.

This would effectively route-around the media industries copyright war-zone, freeing up producers and consumers to create, share and mash-up content as they like. A side benefit, this technique would save a huge amount of bandwidth.

But, what if the specified content was missing from the local device?

In the case of iTunes, a user might specify a set of rules to replace missing content with content from the artist, genre or preview of the track from the iTunes music store.

If nothing appropriate is available it might just skip over the tag, or insert a sexy english voice stating, “The content suggested is not available. Visit this podcast’s site for more details”.

Consumers and producers might want a random tag, used to insert random content by artist or genre. Thereby creating a unique experience every time the podcast is replayed.

Imagine if the consumer could specify the content for the advertising/promos in podcasts?

This would radically differentiate the advertising model emerging in podcasting from the old school media companies. Consumers selecting the type of ads or promos they want to hear, perhaps?

A whole new business could be created hosting and distribute content for insertion into podcasts, at the playback level.

Content-shifting inside time-shifted media, The next innovation in podcasting, in my opinion.