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August 17, 2005

Trouble With Podcasting?

My podcast subs in iTunes. Ok. So I have to confess to spending far too much time creating, thinking about, and listening to podcasts recently. This means I've found some great ones, but I've also gotten a glimpse of the potential pitfalls of this new medium—at least for me.

The first pitfall is that podcasts can be addictive. For example, try listening to just one episode of the Weekly Radio Address and tell me you don't want to listen to another and another and another until you've heard them all. (For some reason I found the July 16 edition especially hilarious.) Bicyclemark's Audiocommunique is the same way for me; at the end of each show I've heard something that makes me want to listen to another to find out what came before. And one show leads to another, and another, and so on until you've got so many to choose from you could listen to nothing but podcasts, 24/7. (Click the image above for a snapshot of my current subscriptions in iTunes.)

So that leads to the second pitfall: In addition to being addictive, listening to podcasts takes a lot of time and it's kind of hard to do anything that takes much thought while you're listening. So podcasts are great for people who drive a lot or spend a lot of time walking or riding public transit, but otherwise, when do you listen? Creating podcasts can also be very time consuming—fun, certainly, but time-consuming. And now, thanks to Bicyclemark, I've discovered this “soundseeing” thing, so obviously I'm going to have to do some of that, too. But where to find the time?

The third pitfall is not really a pitfall, but just a potential blight on the future of podcasting; I'm talking about the commercialization of the medium. Specifically, I got nervous reading the comments on this post asking for speculation about what venture capitalists hope to get out of their investments in podcasting. The basic idea is that the VCs are betting they're going to start making money on selling music and entertainment that somehow competes with the “MSM” (Main Stream Media). I'm not so worried about that, except that it may mean that all the free music at the Podsafe Music Network will only be free so long as only a few people want to use it; as soon as Podshow thinks it can make some real money off of the music (once we're all used to relying on it to make our podcasts fun and cool), it will start charging. And that's fine, I guess. I mean, I'm sure the artists would like to get paid and they deserve some compensation and there are always other sources of free music and maybe we should all be making our own music anyway.... So whatever. I guess there's no free lunch, even in podcasting.

Posted August 17, 2005 06:50 AM | voices


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one of my favorite things to download on a regular basis for my iPod escapes is "one minute vacations": http://www.quietamerican.org/vacation.html ... very neat soundscapes, and they have a podcast feed.

i agree with you about how time consuming it is to listen to a podcast, and i dont want to take the time to load up my iPod every morning, too. so, not a big podcaster (except when we travel).

enjoy.

Posted by: jose at August 17, 2005 12:57 PM

Once these creatures emerge from their pods, none of us will be safe!

Posted by: washburn at August 17, 2005 06:34 PM

No doubt! I never have enough time to listen to all the podcasts I am subscribed. I am several podcasts behind in all but a select few.

Posted by: Daryl [TypeKey Profile Page] at August 18, 2005 12:49 AM

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