LDS General Conference Podcast
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Please visit the new LDS General Conference Podcast page. The rest of this info is old.
Older Info Below
The LDS church makes its general conference sessions available as downloadable MP3s, which is great, except my iPod treats them as songs. I prefer for it to treat them as podcasts so that I can resume playing the talks where I leave off after each day’s commute to work. To that end, I created a podcast RSS feed for the October 2005 General Conference, downloadable here:
http://thesmithfam.org/podcasts/lds-general-conference.xml
If you’re a podcast addict like myself, you should know what to do with that link. If not, any popular podcasting software should work. Just find an option to “subscribe to a podcast” and use it with the above URL. This should work with amaroK, gtkPod, Juice (formerly iPodder), or any iPod management or podcasting software.
This feed lets you grab each whole session (4 total), but not individual talks. If there is demand, I may hack some python to automagically create a feed for each talk, which would be pretty darn cool too.
Note that I am not actually distributing the content; this podcast simply points to lds.org to download the MP3 files. This should avoid any legal issues, since I have respected all copyrights. I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve read all the fine print on lds.org and can’t find anything prohibiting this, so let me know if you think I’m in violation.
21 comments to “LDS General Conference Podcast”
Since posting this, I have discovered that KSL also hosts an LDS General Conference podcast feed. KSL’s feed is likely to be better maintained than my own.
By the way, this podcast stays updated after every conference session. All you have to do is subscribe once and you’re done, forever.
Do you know how to get audio of the general conferance right after it airs? I will be traveling this upcomming general conferance and hope to be able to listen to it.
Do you know if it airs on XM radio?
If not do you know how quickly the podcasts are available after it airs?
thanks
The Church posts the conference audio as MP3 files about 2 or 3 days after conference, and I will update the podcast at that time. If you subscribe to my podcast using the link above, your podcast software (ie, iTunes) will automatically download the new audio as soon as it is available.
I don’t know if XM carries conference. My guess is no.
Thank you very much for this. I was hoping someone had a tip on how to make them act like books or podcasts. I appreciate that you have used a non-dated link (like KSL did).
Nice work here…can you expand the download to include previous conferences…like pre 2005
I guess I could do that. I started the podcast in 2005, but I reckon I could go back in time a bit. I’ll get to that when I get a spare moment, probably this weekend.
Thanks for changing it into a podcast Dave! Now I can listen to General Conference wherever I go.
I recently took the time (I know im crazy) to download every single availble mp3 from lds.org for general conference. I have every talk from 2003-2006 (most recent).
The ID3 tags were a total mess. I went in there and retagged everything correctly. I also renamed the files in a consistent format. I added the title of the song as the track name, the album as the conference session, the author as the appropriate speaker. I coded in track numbers so they play in the correct order when selected by album. I also embedded portrait pictures of the speaker (obtained from lds.org) on each track. They show up great now in ITUNES, portable players etc. This allowed me to play random by author(speaker), by year, or by conference session.
I am trying to contact the church website so they can update their mp3 files with my corrected versions if they want. I’m also asking permission from them before I start distributing the corrected files. E-mail me if you are interested ( david@theveaseys.com ).
See a screenshot of the corrected files in action:
http://www.theveaseys.com/temp/new-id3s.jpg
David V: I think that’s a great idea, especially if you can make a podcast of it.
How do I make a podcast? Once I get the go-ahead, I’d be more than happy to. As long as it won’t cost me anything ;)
Just create an XML file that looks like this one:
http://thesmithfam.org/podcasts/lds-general-conference.xml
And put it on your web-server. Then tell people to subscribe to it with iTunes and you’re done. You can add entries to the XML file periodically as they become available, and everyone’s iTunes software will automagically read the new entries and download the new audio tracks (mp3 files in your case).
Ok, is there any kind of program that will just read the id3 tags from mp3 files in a folder and automagically make me a .xml file with the correct titles and everything. That would be so mint.
I don’t know of any utility to do that, but a quick Google search showed several possibilities.
I’m looking for some conferences on CD not cassette. The ones I’m missing are all of 1998 (168th Annual Conference and Semi-annual) and October 2001 (171st Semi-annual Conference). I’m looking to complete my Ipod conference series so if I could find these in MP3 that would also be great.
HI,
JUST WANT THE INFORMATIION FOR THE 2007 GENERAL LDS CONFERENCE
I just updated the podcast feed to add the April 2007 sessions. Enjoy!
I’d like to listen to general conference on my iPod in Russian. Is that possible? If so, how? Please let me know at prozim@hotmail.com. Thanks!
To Ray from Jan 4th. Did you get October 2001? I need that conference as well, but I have 1998 both semi annual and annual. Write me back at sideburns883@yahoo.com
I’m wondering if anyone can please help me find previous audio versions of any conferences’ like complete sessions. I’m very very interested in finding anything from 1999 all the way back to early 1970’s or whenever they started recording to tape. write me back at matthewstephens23@yahoo.com. Thanks in advance!
What is a good firefox addon to save massive number of pictures on separated links?