Podcast For Dummies

Podcasting: Making Waves

Just when we grasped what blogging was all about, along came podcasting, which in some ways is even more disruptive and exciting than blogging. Being a podcaster myself, I've seen firsthand the business and legal chaos podcasts have created. As you'll see in this column, perhaps they might soon create some political chaos too.

Simply put, podcasting is the act of recording and transmitting digital audio over the Internet to one's computer or MP3 player. The "pod" in podcasting refers to Apple's iPod, but any MP3 player can play podcasts. Using a streaming-media player, you also can listen to podcasts right off the Web. Most listeners do. Researchers from the Pew Internet & American Life Project this month claimed that "more than 22 million American adults own iPods or MP3 players and more than one in four of them have downloaded podcasts."

That seems high to me, and many agree, but Pew stands firm. No matter. Podcasting is here to stay. Paris Hilton will podcast this month to promote her new movie House of Wax. Air America, National Public Radio and Clear Channel Communications all podcast their programs, or say they soon will. A new SciFi Channel podcast featuring Battlestar Galactica Executive Producer Ronald D. Moore gives a running commentary on each episode. Viewers can download the audio and listen along while they watch. Forbes.com, too, podcasts. Click here to listen to excerpts from its weekly radio show. Meanwhile, podcast entrepreneurs jockey to make money and consolidate power. Boku Communications co-founder Adam Curry, a former personality with Viacom's MTV, wants to coax podcasters into creating shows using Boku's professional-quality audio production tools, which they'll find at podshow.com.

To the extent he can empower podcasters, Curry hopes that advertisers will be inspired to shift advertising dollars toward Boku and its roster of audio talent. Says Curry, "Madison Avenue realizes there's an entire generation out there that doesn't listen to the radio." Already there's disruption within the podcasting community itself. Most podcasting pioneers deplore commercialization--just as the dot-edu and dot-org communities bad-mouthed dot-com Web sites a decade ago.

posted by Utahsaint @ 2:01 PM