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Half the headlines we'll get regarding our next issue will be about the fact that we've landed another household name of a rock band for the cover, and the other half will likely center around how the band on our next cover relates to the band on our current cover. Although I didn't try to plan it this way, it's just the order in which the interviews were granted to us, it's an obvious connection that everyone will instantly get - and I don't believe it's ever been done before. But headlines aside, the real story surrounding our April 2nd issue is that it will be our first "100% podsafe" issue.

What does that mean? For anyone not indoctrinated in the terminology, music is considered "podsafe" if it's been legally cleared to be played on podcasts. If you just randomly grab a song and throw it into your podcast, you're opening yourself up to getting sued by the artist, the label, and anyone else who can claim any rights to the song (the fact that you originally acquired the song legally means nothing in this case). But if an artist is forward-thinking enough to submit some or all of their music to the Podsafe Music Network, it gives podcasters like me the opportunity to play that song on my show with no fear of legal repercussions - and it's a healthy dose of free publicity for the musician involved. Sounds like a great idea, and it is, but the major labels still mostly steer clear of it, and hence most podsafe music comes from artists who are on indie labels or don't have a label.

Every single musician we're interviewing for our next issue has at least one "podsafe" song currently available to podcasters. But wait a minute, didn't I just say that the band on the next cover is a household name? Yep. After going indie, they launched the first single from their latest album in the podsafe network about a month before they released their latest album. The album has done really nicely on the iTunes and Billboard charts too (more evidence that giving away portions of your album can only help boost sales, not hurt them). And so yeah, we've got an interview with the famous band on the cover that happens to be podsafe, as well as interviews with a number of less famous musicians who actively participate in the podsafe music community.

Why? Simply put, we're making a statement to anyone who cares to listen. It's a statement I've been trying to subtly make since the magazine launched. In the beginning I had a decision to make about just what our musical approach was going to be. Should we do a bunch of cover stories featuring podsafe musicians from the community, and as a result end up being a magazine whose music content only gets read by that same community? Or should we interview a famous band for every issue, put them on the cover in order to reach a mainstream audience, and then feature podsafe musicians on the inside? I chose the latter, both because I felt it was best for the magazine and because I felt I was doing podsafe musicians more of a service by introducing them to a mainstream audience than by doing something insular that wouldn't have exposed them to anyone new.

Seven issues into it and I'm still working on the formula. For instance, our current issue, the one with Counting Crows on the cover, doesn't have interviews with any podsafe musicians on the inside. Sorry, my fault. That's not going to happen again if I can help it. No one from the community has complained to me about it, but I still feel like I missed an opportunity.

In any case, this time around, we're going to rectify that in spades. It's necessarily a response to last week's wasted opportunity; a 100% podsafe issue is something I've been wanting to do for awhile now. I've simply been waiting for an issue where I could actually do it. I didn't want to be hypocritical and do an "everyone in this issue is podsafe except the famous band on the cover" issue, because what exactly does that accomplish? I've just had to be patient until I was able to hit on a band that was both a household name and podsafe at the same time.

Truth be told, this is an interview I've been trying to land since early February, and I'd have wanted to do the interview whether they were podsafe or not. But as it's worked out, I finally have the opportunity to put a household name on the cover that will attract a mainstream audience while simultaneously saying "hey everyone, this famous band is podsafe, here's what being podsafe means, and here are some other podsafe musicians you should check out as well!"

We'll see what the upshot ends up being. With as much publicity as this next issue is likely to attract due simply to the fact that after fifteen years someone finally managed to get these two bands on consecutive covers of the same magazine, I hope that the 100% podsafe angle doesn't get lost in the shuffle. I know the podsafe community will pick up on the concept one way or the other, and I hope our mainstream readers manage to do the same.

I'll be looking for feedback, positive or otherwise, about how our first 100% podsafe issue turns out - so I can keep all of it in mind the next time we embark on such a project.