I am strongly considering swapping the roles of Bittorrent and the direct MP3 downloads in my RSS feeds. Currently, the MP3 downloads are the enclosures in my main feed and you need a special feed for the Bittorrent enclosures. I’m thinking about switching that, so that the main feed has the Bittorrent enclosures. If that doesn’t work for you, then you’d need to switch over to the special MP3 download feed.
Right now, the vast majority of podcatching clients that are downloading the MP3s could in fact be using Bittorrent. They are BT enabled iPodder variants. The only reason most people are subscribed to the main feed is because that is the first one I publicized and the one that ended up in the directories. In fact, if (when) I do this switch I think many many people will just end up getting the files and not even know anything has happened. If 80% of the people downloading the MP3s were using Bittorrent, there would be an incredible overlap and lots of concurrent peers in that period right after I publish. I think it would work very very well.
I’m looking for feedback on this. Does anyone have a big problem with this? The worst case is that you have to unsubscribe from one URL and resubscribe to a different one. If I do this, the last thing I podcast before switching will be a short announcement saying what is happening that will be a direct MP3 download. I want to avoid breaking subscribers feeds such that they just stop getting it and never know why. Talk to me, friends. What do you think about this?