Playlists as Podcast items

Question

Here is my ill-conceived podcast RSS:
http://uncommonground.com/podcast_hifi.rss?whatdate=11/7/2006
As you can see, hopefully, I was confusing the concept of a "playlist" with a "podcast"
Each <item> in that podcast is a single song from our extensive archive of recorded live material.
The order of the <item>s is what I thought would make the playlist, and if you change the 'whatdate' argument you can get tomorrow's or yesterday's "podcast" (playlist).
I realize, of course, after re-reading the Tech Specs for the tenth time, that I missed the fundamental premise that each <item> IS a podcast.
And that iTunes is treating each song as a "podcast" and re-ordering it by pubDate.
This makes perfect sense, once I have re-read (X 10) the Tech Specs...
Now, however, I have the problem that what I really (still) want is a daily podcast of a playlist of 30 songs.
The supported types in the Tech Specs do not include a "playlist" as far as I can see:
[quote]
Supported extensions include "m4a", "mp3", "mov", "mp4", "m4v", and "pdf".
[/quote]
However, the wording below that list just above the table seems to me to mean that the list is a representative common sample, rather than an exhaustive list of all supported types.
But I'm unable, so far, to find an exhaustive list of supported MIME types, nor a declaration of intent by Apple to support playlists, which seems like a rather obvious and reasonable type to support, to this naive user...
So I'm considering several options, with some obvious pros and cons, but would like your feedback on the not-so-obvious implications:
One option would be to smush 30 songs into one giant MP3, and put the URL to that in the <item> for each day.
This would almost-for-sure render the individual artwork associated with each MP3 useless, no? I can strip it out no problem, as it's an ID3 tag generated on-the-fly anyway, but I'd like to keep the artist headshots with the audio.
It also seems like it would make for a rather large and unwieldy podcast.
As opposed to the 30 songs per podcast as playlist model gives the user a great deal more control and flexibility, which I vastly prefer, and I'm pretty sure Apple's basic human interface philosophy agrees with me.
A second option would be to use a playlist .m3u MIME type for the type attribute of an enclosure, and pray that it works, and if it does work, pray that Apple will really support it.
That relies on un-docmented behaviour, which is just obviously wrong.
My third option is to just not bother with the podcast, as I already have the content available as a daily playlist anyway, and the podcast brings little added value.
Obviously, though I was rather hoping to get listed in Apple's iTunes site, once I work out these kinks and have finished my QA.
My fourth option, and the best one, is that somebody here will point me to some Apple/iTunes documentation I've missed that shows that "audio/mpeg-url" is a perfectly valid supported type.
I have searched for this, but so far failed to find it.
I realize that this is a rather open-ended question as I have couched it, but am hoping that elicits good feedback at a higher level, if the playlist is not supported.
If, obviously, I've just plain missed the docos that show clear support for a playlist as an enclosure, then I apologize profusely in advance for wasting your time reading all this when the answer is a simple link.

Answer 1

Fascinating. I think I replied to you a few minutes
ago in a different thread asking what content you
might have for 20,000 items. That's a pretty cool
site/project.
Thanks.
Suggestion #1: Create a daily MP3 with 30 second
samples of each of the 30 songs.
Right now, our resources are being maximized to produce the audio content as-is, live, direct to hard drive, from a second mix that the engineer does while doing the live sound.
What you are suggesting would require at least a couple/three hours per day of post-production.
Not gonna happen.
Be nice if we could, but not gonna happen.
This is all coming out of my pocket on dumpster hardware (literally) and F/OSS software, as I'm a big OpenSource kind of person. (Reference: Search php-general mailing list archives for my name)
You could even have
someone be the DJ talking about each of the artists
songs, and your coffeeshop's schedule. Then in your
podcast file, put that one MP3 file. The item would
link to the daily page (a page that doesn't seem to
exist on your site yet), e.g. a page
http://www.uncommonground.com/show.htm?date=11/1/2006
and that page would have all 30 full mp3s, with
artist info. This would let people sample all the
music you're sharing, plus drive traffic to your web
site.
I've got plenty of traffic to the website.
Every month the owner of the place is like, "Dude, we got 700,000 hits this month!"
Suggestion #2. I assume you have the appropriate
copyright clearances for the music.
Yes.
The artists sign a release form.
And they login and choose, track-by-track, which ones they want us to provide as streaming (and now podcast), download, in hifi or lofi, and which ones we can play over the speakers in the Cafe and...
So, pretty much, by the time the MP3 hits the public 'net, the artist has signed a piece of paper AND approved our usage by previewing and clicking a "Yes, this one" checkbox.
Set up an
Internet Radio station at Live365.com. You can get a
basic broadcast set for as low as $25/month. For
starting at $2,000/year you can get a professional
package (the X5000). If you look through Live365 from
this link
http://www.dpbolvw.net/email-2190521-10375019 , I'll
get a few bucks as a referral. I've been with Live365
for two years now, it's a lot of fun.
Errr. No, I don't really want to drive traffic to live365 or elsewhere.
I already pay a webhost good money [*] and have no problem generating a playlist, serving up MP3s from a hodge-podge of hard drives and 3rd-tier sites, and caching the popular ones in a front-end controller, while also providing dynamic on-the-fly ID3 tags from the online DB populated by the Artist Profile info which is edited by the artists whenever they want to update their headshot, website, email, etc.
Actually, it's two webhosts and a T-1 to the coffeehouse, if you really want to delve into 5-tier architecture of audio generation, archival, caching, delivery, and fail-safe roll-over...