Opinion: Independent voices will fade away because it is hard to be original and interesting over time, and major media outlets will be the big fish in this small pond.I hope that when Apple adds a Podcasting feature to iTunes—as Steve Jobs says the company will do this summer—that it will turn out better than iTunes' Internet radio feature.
The problem with iTunes radio is that most online broadcasters use RealNetworks or Windows Media formats not supported by the iTunes player. That severely limits the number of Internet stations that iTunes can receive. If you don't believe me, look at iTunes' anemic radio directory.
With Podcasts mostly in MP3 format, iTunes should at least be able to play most of them. Apple plans to automate the downloading process, helping users grab the Podcasts off the Internet for listening on a desktop or laptop or dropping them onto an iPod for mobile listening.
iTunes runs on both Mac and Windows, so that's a plus both for listeners and Podcasters. And while there are other programs that download Podcasts, Apple has the ability to really popularize them in some circles. They aren't, after call, called Podcasts for nothing.
Click here to read another David Coursey column on Podcasting.
Jobs says Apple will do some filtering to help users find quality Podcasts. It will be interesting to see how this works and what chance independent Podcasters will have of making it through the Apple's filter. Over time, I expect the "most listened to" Podcasts will be products of existing media companies that use Podcasts as a means of repurposing content.
I am a big believer in online audio, but it's been a heartbreaker. Internet radio has never really found an audience, and as much as I like Audible.com's selection of downloadable audio books, it's still an acquired taste for most people.
What seems to define Podcasting today is the do-it-yourself nature of much of the content. This won't develop a mass audience, but it might siphon some audience away from other media. Over time, Podcasting will be dominated by professional content, if not in quantity then in share of audience. This won't make Podcasting a real mass medium, either. People just don't want to work very hard for their content, and I'm an example.
At one time, I had an Audible.com subscription to some public radio content. It was automatically downloaded to my desktop each day and synced to my PDA for listening, just as a Podcast should be. That was fun for a while, but the programs consumed disk space and required some attention on my part. In the end, it was easier just to listen on the radio.
Personal Podcasting, like personal blogs, is a fad and will fade. Just like personal sites were a fad in the early days of the Web. People experiment because content creation can be fun, sort of like finger-painting was back in preschool, but people also run out of creative energy, and the maintenance of a site, blog or Podcast becomes a chore. And the content gets boring, and the audience goes away.
Pioneer Webmasters quickly found that creating an interesting Web site required more art and photography skills than most of them possessed. They also learned that creating and maintaining an interesting site was a lot of work, with little reward.
Thanks to blogging software, today it's much easier to create a personal Web site. Content creation—the writing and researching—remains a challenge. Similarly, audio tools make it possible to create a Podcast, but aren't much help in creating interesting content. At some point, the tools give way to human intellect.
My bet is that a year from today the most popular Podcasts will belong to names we already know. Podcasting, if people actually find it interesting, will be dominated by big business, although there will be some small players as well.
Some public radio programming will find a life in Podcasting and could potentially find a large enough audience to support itself. Maybe education content or my beloved audio books will find more of an audience. Someone will even emerge as a Podcast star, but that person will quickly move to more traditional media because that's where the money is. Despite all this, Podcasting will never catch on with the masses.
I've been in the media all my professional life and have spent years trying to understand audience behavior. I can't always tell what the masses will like, but I am pretty good at calling losers. And as a mass medium, Podcasting will be one of them.
Contributing editor David Coursey has spent two decades writing about hardware, software and communications for business customers. He can be reached at david_coursey@ziffdavis.com.
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