David Emery Online

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow

28 June 2005

So, iTunes 4.9 is finally out , and with it comes the mass popularisation of podcasting.

What is podcasting, I hear you (less hip people) ask?

Podcasting is a way of broadcasting an audio file over the Internet, and traditionally uses a subscription model so that you can subscribe (normally using rss) to a podcast, and be notified when it updates.

In other words: it’s radio, for the Internet.

Now, currently podcasting is only just becoming popular; it’s generally not a widely known about technology but several big name companies (the BBC being the best example – they are podcasting a whole load of the radio output) are jumping on the bandwagon. With the incorporation of podcasting into iTunes, it’s going to become a lot more widespread.

Personally, I have yet to really get into podcasting in a major way, and I think that it’s current popularity and hype in the “blog” world is possibly misplaced; a lot of the podcasts out there are very amateur, with exceedingly low production standards, and I get the feeling that a lot of these will die off when the hype dies down.

However, I think that podcasting shows the way that both radio and television are going to go, and this is why it is important (and also a key thing for Apple to implement into iTunes). The subscription system will work equally well for visual broadcasts, and already there are “old media” radio stations releasing their programming in podcast form, and it is easy to envision a day when instead of turning on the radio, you switch on your podcast receiver, select from one of your feeds you haven’t listened to and go on your way.

To reiterate, this is what it going to happen to television as well.

The Tivo, when you actually use it, works in a similar way, with season passes to programs mirroring the feed downloading mechanism. When the podcasting movement gets on to video (and it has already started) television as we know it will radically change. Think about it; no advertising as the adverts will be to easy to skip; much more accurate viewing figures so they actually know what people watch; and most importantly: almost no barrier to entry – when anyone with a camera can get their stuff seen, even though most of it will be rubbish, it’ll still change the world.

Also, back to podcasting for a second, wouldn’t it be cool if bands had there own podcasts? Think, instead of having to wait for an album every 6-12 months, how about automatically getting a track delivered into your iTunes library every week or two? iTunes doesn’t change for podcasts yet, but it sure looks like they will at some point (they’ve got “Free” next to every subscribe button, why do that unless some aren’t going to be free?), so you’ve still get your revenue stream. It goes back to some of the same points I made in my last post on software updating , why should we wait for a whole album when we can get it on demand, as it’s made? Now that’s revolutionary.