Icouldn’t resist responding to all the comments on podcasting
First, yes you can timeshift and transport a podcast, but any streamer can offer a podcast ofa stream. So what.
2nd, I have never seen a live podcast, have you? Not only are there not livepodcasts, but the ability to communicate realtime or breaking information doesn’t work for podcasting. Which is why streaming will always have a place and at least for this type of information, an advantage. So what.
3rd. Podcasting may be hot, but I don’t hear a single person talking about the podcast of Live8. Do you? Yet everyone is talking about the superiority of AOL’s streaming delivery over MTV. Congrats to AOL.
4th. We won’t get into video since it’s not a fair comparison. The number of portabledevices capable of receiving a video podcast right now is miniscule. (Yes,I know about the devices with potential to get them, but they can’t yet and probably all have to be replaced to do so.) So what.
What’s not so what? The economics for indivdual podcasters.
Podcasting is cheap, easy and fun. Yes it’s different than streaming.But thatdoesn’t change the pitiful economics for individual podcasters.
Let me explain to you how things will work.
People are excited about podcasts.
The number of podcasts is small relative to where it will be in the next 24 months.
Big aggregators of Podcastscome on board, a la ITunes. That will skyrocket the downloads/listens for any given podcast.
The podcasters will trumpet those huge increases.
The podcasters will sell a few ads around the podcasts. Some will even sell some subscriptions if they go that way.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry who reads:
1. How easy it isto create a podcast
2. About the “explosive growth” of podcast listeners and downloads for individual podcasts
3. The couple stories trumpeted about podcasters who have an “impact” (on what will be fun to find out) or are profitable from their podcasts (although we will never get any real numbers from them. We just know it costs next to nothing to create, and there is no cost for their time, so if they get anything, that’s profitability) will spur every Tom, Dick and Harry to create their own podcast.
4. The number of podcasts available individually or through aggregators will explode beyond where they are today.
5. That will create a massive dilution in the audience size of the early entry podcasters. EVERYONE’s audience will fall as the marginal listeners find something they like better. Yes, there will be some podcasts that get more listenership than others, but most of them will be repurposed content that already has demand.
6. Individual podcasters who don’t have some other means of generating demand other than being on aggregators will fall off first and the fastest. They will just go away, the only trace remaining will be tiny webpages on the Wayback Machine.
Finally, when those formally known as podcasters do an accounting of the net dollars they earned and compareit to the time they invested, they will realize they made about 17 cents per hour all in.
All that will be left of profit motivated individual podcasters will be the few and far between and probably less than half of a percent of all podcasters (and please don’t anyone post a comment saying…if there are a million podcasters, 1 pct is 10k, half of that is 5k. That’s a ton. I’m making up these numbers to prove a point, not to be literal…Ok?).
And like personal blogs, tens of thousands if not morewill stay on as labors of love that we enjoy because of their creativity.
So in about 3 years, the Podcast phenomena will have run its course and will just be a normal part of the digital media landscape.
Just like streaming.