[Analemma_]

> However, this is obviously highly inefficient on long duration seeks.

Is it that bad? On the podcast, Marco claimed that seeking forward through an MP3 to find the correct time is pretty efficient, and that the reason for all this trouble is that streaming (specifically, requesting the correct byte offset from the server, if you want to jump to a specific time on the stream) is the problem he's trying to tackle here. He said that if it weren't for the streaming use case, he'd be fine with forward-reading.

[MBCook]

He did say it wasn't an issue for downloaded files.

For streaming I believe he said you only get eight bits, which over a two hour podcast is about 30 seconds of precision. Then of course the podcast sometimes goes longer, not to mention how long Gruber's podcast goes.

Sounds like Matco is right it would work well for a 3 minute song but not s multi-hour podcast.