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Podcast

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Podcasting is a method of publishing audio broadcasts via the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed of new files (usually MP3s). It became popular in late 2004, largely due to automatic downloading of audio onto portable players or personal computers.

Podcasting is distinct from other types of online media delivery because of its subscription model, which uses a feed (such as RSS or Atom) to deliver an enclosed file. Podcasting enables independent producers to create self-published, syndicated "radio shows," and gives broadcast radio programs a new distribution method. Listeners may subscribe to feeds using "podcatching" software (a type of aggregator), which periodically checks for and downloads new content automatically. Some podcatching software is also able to synchronise (copy) podcasts to portable music players. Any digital audio player or computer with audio-playing software can play podcasts. The same technique can deliver video files, and by 2005 some aggregators could play video as well as audio.

The word "podcasting" is a portmanteau word that combines the words "broadcasting" and "iPod." The term can be misleading since neither podcasting nor listening to podcasts requires an iPod or any portable music player. For that reason, various writers have suggested reinterpreting the letters POD to create "backronyms" such as "Personal On-Demand."[1] The term "Radio Me" was coined by Peter Day of the BBC for the same reason. A little-used alternate is "blogcasting", although this usually only refers to recordings that are based on, or similar in format to, blogs.

History

Initial development

By 2003, web radio had existed for a decade, digital audio players had been on the market for several years, blogs and broadcasters frequently published MP3 audio online, and the RSS file format was widely used for summarizing or syndicating content. While RSS/RDF already supported media resources implicitly, applications rarely took advantage of this. In 2001, users Adam Curry[2] and Tristan Louis[3], aided by UserLand founder and RSS evangelist Dave Winer[4], added support for a specific enclosure element to Userland's non-RDF branch of RSS, then to its Radio Userland feed-generator and aggregator.

In June 2003, Stephen Downes demonstrated aggregation and syndication of audio files using RSS in his Ed Radio application [5]. Ed Radio scanned RSS feeds for MP3 files, collected them into a single feed, and made the result available as SMIL or WebJay audio feeds.

In September 2003, Winer created an RSS-with-enclosures feed for his Harvard Berkman Center colleague Christopher Lydon, a former newspaper and television journalist and NPR radio talk show host [6]. For several months Lydon had been linking full-length MP3 interviews to his Berkman weblog, which focused on blogging and coverage of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaigns. Having Lydon's interviews as RSS enclosures helped inspire Adam Curry's pre-iPodder script, and related experiments leading to a variety of open source iPodder development. Indeed, blogs would become an important factor in the popularization of podcasting before many professional radio broadcasters and entrepreneurs with business plans adopted the form.

Possibly the first use of the term podcasting was as a synonym for audioblogging or weblog-based amateur radio in an article by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian on February 12, 2004 [7]. In September of that year, Dannie Gregoire used the term to describe the automatic download and synchronization idea that Adam Curry had developed [8]. Gregoire had also registered multiple domain names associated with podcasting. That usage was discovered and reported on by Curry and Dave Slusher of the Evil Genius Chronicles website.

By October 2004, detailed how-to podcast articles[9] had begun to appear online. By July 2005, a Google search for "'how to' +podcast" returned 2,050,000 hits.

Independently of the development of Podcasting and its distribution via RSS, an idea that resembles Podcasting was developed at Compaq Research as early as 1999 or 2000. Called PocketDJ, it would have been launched as a service for the Personal Jukebox or a proposed successor, the first hard-disk based MP3-player, that Compaq's R&D department had started developing in 1998. See appropriate section in the Personal Jukebox article.

Popularization

The word about podcasting rapidly spread through the already-popular weblogs of Curry and other early podcasters and podcast-listeners. Fellow blogger and technology columnist Doc Searls began keeping track of how many "hits" Google found for the word "podcasts" on September 28, 2004, when the result was 24 hits. "A year from now," he wrote, "it will pull up hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions." [10]

Searls kept track of the search results in his blog through the next month. There were 526 hits for "podcasts" on September 30, then 2,750 three days later. The number doubled every few days, passing 100,000 by October 18. His prediction of "perhaps millions" in a year proved to be quite conservative. After only nine months, a search for "podcasts" produced more than 10 million hits.

Capturing the early distribution and variety of podcasts was more difficult than counting Google hits, but before the end of October, The New York Times reported podcasts across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Sweden, mentioning podcast topics from technology to veganism and movie reviews. [11] USA Today told its readers about these "free amateur chatfests" the following February [12] [13], profiling several podcasters, giving instructions for sending and receiving podcasts, and including a "Top Ten" list from one of the many podcast directories that had sprung up. The newspaper quoted one directory as listing 3,300 podcast programs in February, 2005.

Those Top Ten programs gave further indication of podcast topics: four were about technology (including Curry's "Daily Source Code," which also included music and personal chat), three were about music, one about movies, one about politics, and -- at the time No. 1 on the list -- "The Dawn and Drew Show," described as "married-couple banter," a program format that USA Today noted was quite popular on American broadcast radio in the 1940s.

In June, 2005, Apple added podcasting to its iTunes music software, staking a claim to the medium.

A little over a month later, U.S. President George W. Bush became a podcaster[14], when an RSS 2.0 feed was added to the previously downloadable files of his weekly radio addresses at the White House website.

Podsafe

"Podsafe" refers to a track that is legally permissibly to play on a podcast, usually because the band or artist is not signed to a major label or the recording was made under the Creative Commons license. At podsafe sites (like Podsafe Music Network) artists can submit podsafe tracks and podcasters can sign up and get the music for their shows.

Adoption by traditional broadcasters

Main article: Podcasting by traditional broadcasters

Traditional broadcasters were extremely quick to pick up on the podcasting format, especially those whose news or talk formats spared them the complications of music licensing. The American syndicated radio show Web Talk Radio[15] became the first to adopt the format, in September 2004, followed within weeks by Seattle news radio station KOMO and by individual programs from KFI Los Angeles and Boston's WGBH.

The BBC began a trial in October 2004 with BBC Radio Five Live's Fighting Talk. These trials were extended in January 2005 to BBC Radio 4's In Our Time[16]. January 2005 also saw CBC begin a trial with its technology show /Nerd[17]. United States National Public Radio affiliates WNYC and KCRW adopted the format for many of their productions. In April 2005 the BBC announced it was extending the trial to twenty more programmes, including music radio[18] and in the same month Australia's ABC launched a podcasting trial across several of its national stations[19].

In May, 2005, the trend began to go the other way, with amateur podcasts becoming a source of content for broadcast radio programs by Adam Curry, Christopher Lydon and others.

Coping with growth

While podcasting's innovators took advantage of the sound-file synchronization feature of Apple Computer's iPod and iTunes software -- and included "pod" in the name -- the technology was always compatible with other players and programs. Apple was not actively involved until mid-2005, when it joined the market on three fronts: as a source of "podcatcher" software, as publisher of a podcast directory, and as provider of tutorials on how to create podcasts with Apple products GarageBand and Quicktime Pro.

File:Itunespodcast.png
The podcasting selection views of iTunes 4.9

When it added a podcast-subscription feature to its June 28, 2005, release of iTunes 4.9[20], Apple also launched a directory of podcasts at the iTunes Music Store, starting with 3,000 entries. Apple's software enabled AAC encoded podcasts to use chapters, bookmarks, external links, and synchronized images displayed on iPod screens or in the iTunes artwork viewer. Two days after release of the program, Apple reported one million podcast subscriptions.[21]

Some podcasters found that exposure to iTunes' huge number of downloaders threatened to make great demands on their bandwidth and related expenses. Possible solutions were proposed, including the addition of a content delivery system, such as Akamai; a peer-to-peer solution, BitTorrent; or use of free hosting services, such as those offered by Ourmedia, BlipMedia and the Internet Archive.

Other uses

Podcasting's initial appeal was to allow individuals to distribute their own "radio shows," but the system is increasingly used for other reasons, including:

  • Another outlet for commercial and public radio stations. (See list of radio stations with podcasts.) or a way to avoid regulatory bodies, like the British Ofcom, that would not allow a programme to be broadcast in traditional media.
  • A way for news organizations to distribute audio as an addition to their existing text (or mostly-text) news products. For example, the news site Wikinews began to podcast its News Briefs in 2005.
  • Education. Musselburgh Grammar School, Scotland began podcasting foreign language audio revision and homework, possibly becoming the first school in Europe to launch a regular podcast [22]. The online encyclopedia Wikipedia has begun podcasting encyclopedia articles.
  • Politics. In Singapore, where practically all broadcast media are controlled by the government, opposition Singapore Democratic Party leader Chee Soon Juan has adopted podcasting to distribute his messages.
  • Religion. Podcasting (or in this context, Godcasting) has been used by many religious groups [23]. St Mark's Anglican Church, Clayfield Australia podcasts talks and sermons from their evening service [24]. Disciples with Microphones provides podcasts relating to the Catholic church [25].
  • Unofficial audio tours of museums [26].
  • Communication from space. Another notable use of podcasting occurred on 7 August 2005 when American astronaut Steve Robinson made the first podcast from space (transcript & audio) during Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS-114.

See also

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Notes and references

  1. ^ Technology writer Doc Searls had proposed "Personal Option Digital" in September, 2004. The "Personal On-Demand" interpretation (with that capitalization) had been in international circulation as early as October 2004. In July 2005, Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble used that same version when countering reports that his company was pushing the word "blogcasting" to avoid mentioning an Apple product. Scoble, Robert, 2005. "Blogger gives incorrect data about podcasting at Microsoft."
  2. ^ Winer, Dave, Oct. 31, 2000 Virtual Bandwidth; and Jan. 11, 2001 Payloads for RSS
  3. ^ Curry, Adam, Oct. 27, 2000. The Bandwidth Issue
  4. ^ Louis, Tristan, Oct. 13, 2000. Suggestion for RSS 0.92 specification
  5. ^ Ed Radio
  6. ^ Christopher Lydon Interviews
  7. ^ Hammersley, Ben. 2004. "Audible revolution." In The Guardian, Thu, Feb 12 2004.
  8. ^ Gregoire, Dannie J. 2004. "How to handle getting past episodes?" In the ipodder-dev mailing list, Thu, Sep 16 2004.
  9. ^ Torrone, Phillip. 2004. "How-To: Podcasting." In Engadget, Oct 5 2004.
  10. ^ Searls, Doc. Sept. 28, 2004. Doc Searls' IT Garage, "DIY Radio with PODcasting."
  11. ^ Farivar, Cyrus. Oct. 28, 2004. The New York Times, "New Food for IPods: Audio by Subscription."
  12. ^ Acohido, Byron. Feb. 9, 2005. USA Today, "Radio to the MP3 degree: Podcasting."
  13. ^ Della Cava, Marco R. Feb. 9, 2005. USA Today, "Podcasting: It's all over the dial."
  14. ^ Web Talk Radio, 2004-09-15. "WebTalk Launches New Website."
  15. ^ BBC Press Office, 2005. "BBC podcasting sparks Fighting Talk."
  16. ^ Newitz, Annalee. 2005. "Adam Curry Wants to Make You an iPod Radio Star." In Wired Magazine. See also: CBC Podcasting page, CBC /Nerd page.
  17. ^ BBC Press Office, 2005. "BBC to podcast up to 20 more programmes including Today and Radio 1 speech highlights."
  18. ^ ABC Radio National podcasts.
  19. ^ Apple – iTunes
  20. ^ iTunes Podcast Subscriptions Top One Million
  21. ^ Musselburgh Grammar School Podcast
  22. ^ Heinen, Tom. 2005. "Podcasting becomes another pulpit." In JS Online, Jun 11 2005.
  23. ^ St Mark's Church, Clayfield
  24. ^ Disciples With Microphones
  25. ^ Kennedy, Randy. 2005. "With Irreverence and an iPod, Recreating the Museum Tour." In The New York Times, May 28 2005.
  26. ^ BBC Collective, 2005. Podcasting for beginners
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