The evidence (paraphrased):

1. The New York Times is getting out of podcasting.
2. People the author’s age (youth?) aren’t listening to podcasts (but his parents love them).
3. Most people listen to podcasts of shows that they missed on radio.
4. Podcasts are hard to make.
5. Podcasts are hard to monetize, and have “smallish” audiences.
6. Podcasts are hard to get/manage.

The New York Times is Not All of Podcasting

It’s common to cite a particular example in an argument as the exemplar in support of your argument, but singular examples are usually exceptions, not rules. In this case, I doubt the NYT was ever a major player in the podcasting scene. Like many of their recent experiments, it was a dabbling most likely in response to a buzzword only half-understood, and not core to their business. (What is their business? Like most newspapers, it is about withholding information in order to sell their audience to advertisers..)

I never subscribed to a NYT podcast, so I don’t know what quality they were. I also don’t read the NYT, don’t live in NY, don’t even live in the United States. I do have subscriptions to between 250-300 podcasts, and it hasn’t really been going down recently. I’m an anomaly, to be sure, but my point is that the few podcasts the NYT had hardly made a dent in the overall marketplace.

Podcasting is for a Certain (Older) Generation

To properly consume podcasts right now, one has to have the right equipment, have the right software, and have the right bandwidth.

Oh, and they have to know about the podcast!

It should be no surprise that the 30-40 year old set is the most popular adopters of podcasting. It plays off of a medium that many of us remember being good (radio), it involves technology that is very much in our reach (MP3 players, desktop computers, high-end phones, good Internet connections), and it is often found because of networks of people that usually engulf a few on-the-bleeding-edge technologists.

It ain’t a kid’s game.. Yet.

There are significant barriers to that right now, mostly because the initial innovators in this field have either stagnated (LibSyn, Mevio, iTunes, every podcast directory), left the market entirely (Lemon, Dave Winer, most podcast umbrella sites), are hyperfocussed on marketable video, or are not in the position to actively work on it. There are a few innovations (Stitcher), but the core protocol (RSS) and the primary podcast management tool (iTunes) are woefully under-attended.

So, without movement, it can appear that podcasting is dead. It’s not dead, it’s waiting…

But there is another generation coming up, one that is demonstrating remarkable adapability, an eagerness to innovate, a willingness to experiment, and perhaps even a desire to build cool stuff first and then worry about the monetization later.

In other words: another generation just like the present, only still young.

Podcasting is no more dying in this respect than all other media. There appears to be a generalized attention deficit disorder, but that is really just a reaction (I suspect) to being given too many (exciting, competing) choices, without any real tools to manage them. It’s the 500-channel universe all over again, and once again we’ve been given a remote control with a “next channel” and “previous channel” button. Sure, some enthusiast technophiles have created home-built systems with computers to cross-index listings and change the channel automagically, but for most, it’s a plod that usually ends us at settling for whatever program on whatever channel we ended up on.

Radio Makes For Good Podcasting

How is this a surprise, or even a change? Radio has a hundred years of practice, training, technology, skill and professionalism in creating interesting, well-crafted, compelling, informative audio programming. So, when radio programs are released as podcasts, they carry over that quality, and are very attractive to podcast listeners.

Instead of bemoaning this fact, do what I do: learn from them. Radio programs as podcasts are like an open school, where you get to sit at the feet of the masters and see what you should do. Sure, not everything they do is worth copying, but it’s worth studying. Only when you understand the medium which is the predecessor of podcasting can you really hope to go beyond it. (Although having total ignorance also means you ignore what were once considered limitations or “you can’t do that!” situations..)

There are plenty of radio podcasts in my subscriptions. Podcasting is still very important, because it makes it much easier to listen to these shows from around the world, and throw my voice into them as well. In my day job, I even work in radio, and want to encourage members to podcast their shows, as well as do them on radio, to increase their reach.

Podcasting is Easy; Good Podcasting is Hard

Alright, so there are a few steps involved in podcasting:

• Record something.
• Post it.

Podcasting is not really any harder than blogging, tweeting, posting on Facebook, many online activities that billions are quite happily doing these days — nearly from birth! But going from “having a podcast” to “having a good podcast” or “having a popular podcast” takes work. You need to work on editing, on having quality content, on SEO and branding, on promotion and spreading the word. Some shows never achieve this, or are fantastic shows that no one ever hears of.

It is definitely true to say that there aren’t a lot of tools out there, and that’s a place where there is plenty of fair criticism to be placed. Most of the tools that most podcasts use (Audacity, WordPress, PowerPress, iTunes) are free, however, and there are plenty of books on the market to help you with every step of the process.

But crafting anything of quality is hard work. Sometimes, you get lucky, and your content is so compelling as to be on a level of its own, but most of the time, every podcaster is fighting for a small portion of the over-full attention span of their listeners, and things like quality tend to be factors in decisions to ditch or keep a particular podcast.

No One Makes Money In Niches.. Except Those Who Do

One of the strongest elements of podcasting, for most podcasters, is that their audience is listening because they want to. They aren’t listening because it was the only thing on, because it’s the only thing that is being promoted by the major networks, or because it is the only thing that marginally covers their topic of interest. Podcast audiences are small, they are niche, and that is a good thing.

Of course, most market models don’t seem to like that. Most market models seem to be based (and biased) on the advertisement model that radio and television uses. That is, roughly: “there is a large audience, most of which is not really paying attention or interested in our product, but if we broadcast to all of them, we’ll reach the small percentage that really matter to us”. In that model, it’s a numbers game, because you are only getting a small part of the number.

No so, with podcasting. Instead of a large, varied and mostly uninterested and unfocussed audience, you have a small, dedicated, focussed and engaged audience. If you advertise a product relevant to that niche, you win big.

Now, a podcast that reaches a thousand dedicated listeners probably can’t command the same price for its advertising time as the television show that reaches a million people — but it probably has a higher rate of return on the advertising investment.

We are seeing some penetration into this idea — there are podcasts which carry advertising which pays for them — but it is slow. Alternative models are being created, such as the patronage model which is currently being used quite successfully in crowdfunding initiatives like Kickstarter or IndieGoGo.

But podcasting isn’t done (yet) to get rich.

iTunes Sucks; Mobile Data Plans Cost Too Much

One thing I will definite agree on (and hit upon often enough here on the blog) is that we really need some better consumer tools to manage podcasts. The problem is, those who have the money to invest (big media, advertisers) are usually not the ones most interested in doing it (producers and consumers).

Then again, if we’d waited for those in the best position to make podcasting in the first place, it would look awful, cost too much, be too limited and ultimately die from lack of compatibility. (Much like RealAudio did.)

Podcasting came from a combination of a few technologists and a bunch of enthusiasts saying “why shouldn’t this exist?” and then “can we make this exist?”. When Apple jumped on board, it pushed things forward, and they aggressively pushed to have mindshare and a monopoly in the market. They produced a pretty revolutionary package — the iPod — and captured the attention of the world. Before the iPod, there were MP3 players, but now its synonymous with that market.

Mobile phone competition seems to be the best avenue of change, and apps are starting to show up that manage podcasts. They aren’t as well integrated (yet), but its a promising start.

But don’t necessarily change RSS. It’s simple, it works. Don’t blame it for the problems in the production or consumer end — we need a simple standard, so that the ends can easily allow multiple competing tools.

Podcasting Is Not Dead, It’s Just Stunned

So podcasting isn’t, to my estimation, dying. It’s just a bit dazed, shaken a bit by its tremendous early success that saw a flood of low- to medium-quality shows in the market (because it was so easy to get in!). That flood seems to have receded as all of those who jumped in expecting instant fame and success and money have left, but what remains is better than ever. We need better tools, we need to keep developing and refining the medium, but it seems quite healthy and stable.

Here’s the very important ending quote from the article: “Is there a way to reinvigorate the podcast mechanism for 2012 to the future, are we fine where we are, or should we let podcasts die out?”

Well, for starters: stop saying podcasting is dead!

After that: let’s talk. Let’s build. Let’s make more.

This effort is sparse, at the moment, but could grow, with effort and participation. It is the Internet Podcast Database (IPDB). (Scott has suggested that things will be moving soon to PodcastDatabase.com, so I’ll include that link as well.)

I’ve lamented continuously about the lack of real discovery and management tools we have for podcasts, so I won’t rehash that topic. Sadly, despite the break I’ve taken from publishing here, nothing really dramatic seems to have happened.

One thing I’ve never really talked about here is Stitcher, or the various other on-device podcatchers. Mostly, that’s out of ignorance and a lack of time to remedy it, but also because I confess a certain aversion to the concept of end-device podcast management. Some are quite happy to separate the collection of podcasts from their central home computer or laptop — mostly, I suspect, because it frees you from using the stagnated singular leading product in the market, iTunes. Given the growth in processor power and storage on portable devices, as well as their role in day-to-day activities formerly associated with desktop computer use growing (email, web browsing, messaging, gaming, etc), it’s a trend that’s likely to continue.

But it leaves power-users like myself a bit in the dust. I can’t possibly store the unheard episodes of the podcasts I’m already subscribed to on any portable devices on the market, nor would I want to subject myself to podcast playlist management on a screen barely big enough to handle my sausage fingers.

(Side note: bring back physical buttons, dammit!)

I also wonder about the history of a podcast being appreciated when you put in on a compressed device. There are podcasts I’ve collected for a “rainy day” of listening. Others which had their run, podfaded, and have now become complete volumes on my “podshelf”, to be brought down, dusted off, and enjoyed when I have a lull in other programs, much like I will pick up a book from my bookshelf that hasn’t yet been written. There are other podcasts which I will complete but not delete; rather, I put them back on the podshelf to enjoy again at a later date. This is particularly true of fiction podcasts, but there is a class of “timeless” podcast which includes non-fiction as well.

And finally, there is the biggest problem of all: podcasting silos, otherwise known (crudely) as the creation of a vertical marketplace. Each of these end-device applications has it’s own database of podcasts, which is created either through the googlescraping of podcasts and defunct directories, or must be submitted to by overworked podcast producters who have to somehow keep on top of every nickel-and-dime-store podcasting application creator’s product release.

So, instead of really solving a problem, for example, the issue of iTunes being a “walled garden”, you have, instead, the creation of a panoply of walled gardens, or the creation of the “podcasting walled garden” as a category of thing, and instances replicated throughout these applications.

So, I laud Scott’s effort for an independent body of knowledge, free of individual applications. It’s form is that of a wiki at present, and it is a community-driven effort, but I suspect it may transform into a form of directory at some point. With luck, it will survive the transformation with the lessons of the past failed and faded directories, and provide a resource that can automatable connections to software. With luck, we’ll see the offspring of such a project be the podcast directory service equivalent of what RSS is to podcasts; that is, an organizing principle which is metaphorically accessible and machine-readable.

Television grew quickly from just a few channels to many. I remember the dial on my mother’s most advanced TV was still only rated for about a dozen channels. We propped a cable box on top and the little 2-number LED display could suddenly get all the way to 99 channels. Obviously, it made no sense to flip through the channels linearly, so it came with a number pad.

Even more significantly, it came with a remote control.

(Yes, this is eventually about podcasting..)

Now, every TV comes with a remote. Heck, some TVs don’t have any manual controls at all any more. But the number of channels grew again, but not everyone liked all of them. The “Favourite Channel” sub-list was created, allowing you split a small group from the huge morass of video goodness.

Surprisingly, I haven’t seen many systems which are much more sophisticated than this. At least, not for televisions. YouTube (and many other video sites, I’m vicariously sure) has multiple favourites lists, all of which are arbitrarily named by the consumer. Many other mediums and domains have adopted this simple trick to allow consumers to manage the flood of things coming at them.

And yet, my podcasts are still delivered as a lump.

Podcasting quickly moved from the few channel to the million-channel universe, far more rapidly than radio (which never did, as local markets never have that much space) or TV (which arguably is there, but local markets seemed to be capped out at the 500 level).

The web is built of information, and all successful things on the web are searchable. We haven’t quite gotten the hang of how to organize the web in a personal way yet (we seemed to have stalled out at bookmarks, and now assume Google will find it for you), and we’ve had even less success with podcasts.

At least we moved beyond the simple concept of “consumer manually finds and downloads individual episodes” to “consumer has a tool to subscribe to podcasts to download them on their behalf”.

But what’s next?

I’ve lamented that the market for podcatchers seems remarkable and inexplicably small. There is so little competition in this space that iTunes wins almost by default. And yet iTunes hasn’t done much to really make podcasting any better for a while.

One can argue that it is not actually in Apple’s best fiscal interests to make podcasting better. After all, podcasts are likely free, they are largely unregulated, sometimes contain infringements, and no one profits from them.

(Well, not “no one”, but I would suggest that the number is statistically insignificant..)

iTunes is there to make it easy for you to consume stuff you’ve paid for. Granted, they’ve been removing DRM from the process, but even the presence of DRM suggests controls for economic — and not logical, functional or useful — reasons.

The one saving grace from newer versions of iTunes is the growing sophistication of Smart Lists, allowing people with some logical mindset to build cascading collections of Smart Lists to manage our podcast collections. In this way, they’ve essentially outsourced the feature of podcast management to the consumer.

Alternatively, I’m seeing more and more movement to end-device podcast management. You can subscribe and order podcasts on your mobile phone or tablet, for example. This sounds like a good idea, but it’s a lot like sorting the books on your desk while the books on your shelves are in random order: local changes which don’t help the larger context.

So, where do we go from here? What’s the next step?

I think part of what needs to be considered is how podcasts can be organized. I will share in another article how I organize my podcasts for listening, and how I’d like to be able to do it. Feel free to suggest how you might do it.

Some questions to ponder:

• Do you know of alternative podcatchers? If you have any experiences (positive or negative) with them, please leave a comment.
• Why is the podcatcher market so small, despite the steady increase in interest in podcasts?
• Is there an increase in interest in podcasts, or are on-web players and manually downloadable files where the majority of interest lies?
• How do you organize your podcasts? How would you organize them, if you had the tools?
• How many podcasts do you listen to? Is there enough to organize?
• What meta-data do you wish podcasts came with? Frustratingly, podcasts within iTunes are automatically labelled with the genre “Podcast”, which is redundant when the more formal “Media Kind” metadata also labels things as “Music”, “Video”, “Audiobook” and “Podcast”.
• What organizational tricks do you have?
• What analogies from other organizational groups can be useful? Is it useful to consider the card catalogue or Dewey decimal system, or the subscription super-pack model?

That means that it really falls into the hobby category, and that means that other things take priority, sometimes.

Obviously, I’ve had a few priorities to deal with, but I’ve kept this blog set up and paid for the hosting to make sure that I remind myself to come back to it, when I have time.

And then I realized: I will never have time, just free-floating time that is free of all obligations.

I have to do what people have been telling me for years: I’ll have to make time.

For all those years, I’ve bristled at that term, feeling myself surrounded by obligations that don’t have any room to wiggle in. I’ll still do, but I’m starting to realize the real essence behind the phrase. It’s not about “making” time, it’s about deciding not to waste it.

With the multitude of things to distract, amuse and work at, it’s no surprise that time rarely feels wasted, but rather just consumed.

Ah, but what does this have to do with podcasting? If anything?

Actually, I think it has something very fundamental to do with the emergence of the podcasting medium. I think podcasting is one of the ultimate expressions of people wanting to organize their leisure time, to take control over the schedule of entertainment that, for the majority of its modern timeframe, was out of our control.

We don’t control the TV schedule, or the radio schedule. We don’t organize the paper to our needs. Those schedules were given to us, partially because the number of content generators was low, due to barriers to entry.

For a time, in the early days of popular books (as opposed to academic or religious texts), it was possible for the well-read scholar to have read much the same books as another well-read scholar — or to be able to catch up by reading the half-dozen books they didn’t have in common.

(Alright, I admit that I’m stretching the point a bit here..)

Now we are in the stage of post-scheduled media. Television got VCRs and now DVRs. Music got CDs (which allow rapid switching between songs, as opposed to reels or cassettes) and now iPods. The newspaper got the Web, the most dramatic de-scheduler of reading possible, as well as eBooks.

And radio got podcasting. (Well, technically television also got podcasting, but the number of video podcasts seems to be vastly out-numbered by audio podcasts, despite their disproportionate popularity and interest.)

I should pause here to point out that one of my current distractions from podcasting is the fact that, nearly a year ago, I started working full-time at a campus/community radio station. I’ve been a volunteer there since the 90s, but now I’m responsible for pulling the dang thing together.

I think about the clash between podcasting and radio considerably, and hope that I’ll be able to expand upon some of those thoughts here, in future posts.

Now, to return to the disruption of the scheduled media…

I think we missed a step, or rather, have created a vacuum that needs to be filled. We have successfully flattened the field of media and created a chaotic mess into which we can dip our minds whenever and whereever we please.

This is pretty daunting. It’s like getting rid of all the channels on your television, as well as all the timeslots, and just offering all the shows directly to you.

I think that the schedule wasn’t inherently the problem — control over the schedule was.

To remove that control, we’ve created a medium which is direct from producer to consumer, and scheduled only in time.

I remember a project that was started at Podshow, one of the places that was (for a time) trying to be innovative in how shows were delivered. They re-introduced the notion of a channel, but with a distinct shift in the control point: it was your channel, it gave you the ability to play organizer and remake the podcasting world to your own needs.

This was a pretty impressive feature (marred by a weak early implementation), but suffered from a fatal flaw: it was great for Podshow shows, but was not really useful for non-Podshow programs. In other words, it offered you great control — in a limited domain.

I’ve seen this sort of thing over and over again: walled gardens which want to exercise control over their audience, to “monetize” them, capture them within an area to squeeze them for money, usually for an auxiliary group (rather than the show producers themselves).

The excitement for the Podshow channel notion passed quickly for me. Instead of offering me a real tool of control, it offered me a leash. (Checking in on it quickly today confirms that its stuck to that same model.)

It’s kinda like a cable company that only lets you record the television programs that the company wants, rather than any program that airs.

(And yes: I’m aware that this is actually what they do, and pointing out that it’s offensively nonsensical…)

I think this user-control issue is one of the limits on podcasting, one that hasn’t really been solved. With iTunes being now the de facto podcatcher standard, there is no competition in this market, and even more market confusion than ever before.

It frustrates me, because I can see how much better it could be!

The one good thing is that the Smart Playlist feature of iTunes is relatively sophisticated, and I can create mock channels of podcasts for playback management. In particular, I have a playlist which captures an unheard subset of the podcasts that I wish to check in on daily. I have another playlist which is manually managed, and the other smart playlists will check to see if I’ve already scheduled the podcast episode to be heard.

In this way, I can create a pseudo-channel, albeit a primitive form of the real notion I’m grasping for.

I fear I’ve reached the end of my wind for this article, but I hope I’ve given you something to ponder. As is tradition, here are some specific questions to ponder:

• How many podcasts do you subscribe to? In my case, the number fluctuates, but generally remains between 100 and 200, with a peak at well over 300.
• How do you organize your podcasts? Or more accurately, how do you organize your podcast listening?
• Do you separate your podcasts by “kinds”, such as “podcast book”, “serial drama”, “daily news”, “weekly”, “evergreen”?
• Does the “channel” notion make any sense when applied to podcasting? How would you define “channel”, in an ideal podcasting world?
• What other podcatchers do you use? I know of Juice/iPodder, but that seems stalled. What would you want in a podcatcher, from a consumer’s perspective? What about from a producer’s perspective?
• I’ve given a short view of the channels as offered by Podshow (now Mevio). Care to defend them? Expand upon the description or point out their benefits? I’m quite willing to expand my learning, and admit to not having looked deeply at them again.

If you listen* to podcasts, think about how you came to listen to them. I suspect that the most popular answers, based on my own experience and discussions with others, are in roughly this order:

1. I knew someone working on the podcast
2. Someone I knew recommended the podcast because they listen to it.
3. I heard a promo played on a podcast I already listen to.
4. The podcast is attached to some other media product (TV series, movie, book series, video game, music, etc.) that I already consume.
5. I did a web search for specific keywords.
6. The podcast was recommended by iTunes.
7. I looked in a podcast directory at the most popular podcasts (possibly within a specific category).
8. I searched through a podcast directory.

Any others? (I suspect there are; please leave your additions in the comments.)

Now, look at the list again. The order is admittedly somewhat slanted to make a point, but I think it still accurately reflects the sentiment that I’ve heard from the people I’ve talked to, with a bit of reflection on my part.

Let’s simplify the list a bit, to make my point more clear:

1. Social networking
2. Commercial enterprises, advertising and prominent search results
3. Directories

Are podcast directories dead?

It is not without good reason that the terms “new media” and “social networking” are often interchanged or even merged into “social media” . That is how they propagate the most successfully. Now that we have fairly robust social networks and incredible penetration of social networking tools (Twitter/Facebook), it should be no surprise that there is a media that takes advantage of it.

Oh, there have always been “word of mouth” spreading of products as varied as comic books to truck parts, but never has it been as strong as today.

But notice where directories lie on that list?

Podcast directories are a derivative product of the podcasting phenomena: they wouldn’t exist without podcasting. However, they are not a direct by-product of it, and aren’t directly supported by the production of podcasts.

I’ve been wondering and worrying over the state of podcast directories for a while now. I’m sad to say, they are in really bad shape. The two formerly go-to directories, Podcast Alley and Podcast Pickle, are mere ghosts of their previous ambition, unsustained and buried in weeds. iTunes is an automated behemoth, a minimal (if stylish) representation of a directory, but is a walled garden (and continues to not dissuade the erroneous association between podcasts and the iPod). Canada Podcasts listings associated with The Canadian Podcast Buffet are kept current and culled every year, but the information is sparse and the target subject limited.

(I’d like to mention Podiobooks.com in passing as a very successful directory because it has a self-sustaining model and is frequently updated. However, it has timeless content and a very narrow focus, so I’m not sure if it qualifies as a directory. Perhaps it is really a “store”, in a semi-non-traditional sense, as it is a directory of products it has (indirectly) produced.)

Podcast directories just aren’t cutting it..

But in retrospect, is there any surprise? It takes extra effort to organize, maintain, validate and discover podcast information, and if the effort is centralized (and not delivered by the podcasters themselves), then it is significant extra work that needs to be balanced somehow.

Advertising was the obvious balancing method that was tried. For numerous and often unfathomable reasons, podcasting and advertising has not managed to reach a stable relationship yet, either relying on a dwindling number of ad products — which, as an avid podcast listener, sounds oversaturating — or on a direct patronage model, which works best when there is a by-product to sell, whether direct (as in a novel) or indirect (merchendise like t-shirts, mugs, etc).

He Said You May Also Like XYZ.. and Other Mysteries

In contrast, the social networking aspect of podcast spreading has remained solid, in part because it is capitalizing on the combination of cognitive surplus, ease of communication on established social connections, and in part because of its inherent decentralized nature.

But what does this mean to a podcaster? How does a podcaster reach their audience?

The centralized directories, with all their flaws, at least gave a target to aim at, somewhere a podcaster could update. Podcasts attached to bigger media properties get a bit of a break here, as at least the second discovery method — where listeners are self-motivated to find the program — are natural and likely in the modern Web world.

But social networking revitalizes (to some degree) an ancient saying: “it’s who you know”. Seeding your podcast in the collective consciousness means bending the ears of influential people, even if indirectly through distant peers; to wit: “it’s not really who you know, but who the people you know, know”.

Fortunately, it’s not as hard as it seems, due to the very community-oriented and micrcosmic nature of podcasting. Sure, you may not be able to catch the attention of the biggest names in podcasting, but you are likely to find that the next tier down is more accessible — and more numerous.

In some cases, all it takes is the involvement of other members of the community. This is not only a good way to involve the entire network of people who follow those members, but also usually produces a better product, and establishes connections to the community that often turn into friendships, mentorships and future collaborations.

Promos Are Hyperlinks

Another aspect of this involvement is in the cross-promotion of podcasts with promos. This is the “retweet” of the podcasting world, really: it works because it capitalizes on the shared interests between the podcaster, the other podcast, and the audience. I’ve seen some decline in this practice recently, mostly in terms of podcasts not having new promos, and I think I attribute that more to the fact that the podcasters are busy and don’t really appreciate how powerful a podcast promo is.

(I should point out that I, too, fall into that category. However, I was also on the verge of podfade due to time commitments. Both of these are being remedied due to returning interest.)

Promos are to podcasts what links are to Web pages. They are the potential crossing-over point of audiences, the glue that binds the social network around podcasts together.

Unconventional Conventions

Some fantastic work is being done in the podcasting community. These thoughts all spring to mind after attending what may be one of the most prominent podcasting-related conferences in North America, perhaps even the world: a science-fiction convention on the Eastern side of the United States called Balticon. Having just returned from my third trip to this fun convention, I reflect on the nature of this relatively tight-night group of podcasters, who range the entire spectrum of podcasting, including some of the most successful podcast authors and producers.

As it was put to me several times, the best description was “come to Balticon, because here you will have the family reunion of the family that you never knew you had”.

I recognize that my experience is somewhat limited, but from hearing discussions and talks from others, there aren’t many other conferences with such a strong focus on podcasting (and particularly podcast fiction) — or at least not many that are as much fun. The next most prominent example is Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Georgia (which I have attended twice). Of equal prominence is Canada’s own PAB (Podcasters Across Borders) conference in Ottawa (which I have not yet attended, but is currently underway). Smaller, regional “un-conferences” exist in the form of PodCamps (I’ve attended one held in Halifax in 2009).

The New Media Expo was once a promising podcasting-related conference, but seems to have not grown successfully in the wake of its absorption into BlogWorld.

Do you know of other examples? Include them in the comments, please.

I think one of the reasons that PodCamps and smaller attachments to science-fiction conventions work better than industry-focused events is simply because they are less serious, more relaxed and intended to have fun as much as to conduct business. In the next week, I’ll be attending NCRC in Halifax, Nova Scotia, which is a conference specifically meant to gather representatives from campus/community radio stations from across Canada. I’m interested to contrast that experience with the podcasting tracks of Balticon and Dragon*Con. In particular, I’m curious to see if the social and community aspects that I’ve seen so successfully employed in podcasting are already present to be exploited in campus/community radio — and if not, to see if they can be encouraged.

To some degree, the notion that physically getting together for a convention or conference is antiquated when faced with the rising cost of travel, the concerns over wasted energy, and the simply fantastic alternative communications methods offered by the Internet today. But just as an audio podcast is often a much more intimate, personal and moving experience than is simply reading a blog, these short physical co-habitations inject tremendous momentum into the online collaborations, and re-inforce the bonds that will allow future media structures to be elevated.

As an aside: I’m looking forward to returning to the practice of regular Understanding Podcasting updates, both as a blog and as a podcast. If you have any comments, questions or ideas that I should consider, by all means leave a comment, send an email or call the feedback line. If you would like to discuss the matter over Skype, especially for an episode of the UP! podcast, let me know and we’ll set it up.

Questions

• Is the podcast directory dead, as a concept? Is there a way to reinvigorate it, or give it a self-sustaining model?
• What can be added to podcasts and podcast feeds to make automatic harvesting into directories more useful/accurate?
• Where do you find out about new podcasts? Do you find collective ratings (such as iTunes or Podcast Alley) to be useful? What other podcast directories do you consider?
• Not every podcasts comes out regularly — at what point should it be removed from a directory, or at least marked as “inactive”?
• What other venues besides Balticon, Dragon*Con, PAB and various PodCamps do you see as good crossing-over points between podcasters and the audience? I know there are various video-podcast/video-blogger awards ceremonies and gatherings, but I’ve never heard of them as more than viewing festivals. Feel free to show me I’m wrong.
• Social media is distributed, by its nature: true or false? Why do you say that?
• The injection of commercially-backed “professional podcasts” into the podcasting world has had an impact, both on the widespread acceptance of the notion of a podcast in the mainstream audience, and to challenge the quality level of existing podcasts. But, similar to the bevy of media tie-in novels that crowd out smaller titles in bookstores, are the “big boys” crowding out the “little guys”?

(* I come from primarily the audio podcasting world, and while I could use the terms “audience” or “consumers” or even “customers” more generically to refer to the people on the other end of the podcasting pipe, I tend to consider “listeners” as the most intimately expressive term for the close community around a podcast.)

The question always arises: how can I help?

I don’t have money to give, can’t afford to go there and help in person.

But I have a voice, and a little bit of savvy, and I trust some organizations to do the right thing.

If you can, donate to an organization you trust. I know that the majority of my readers/listeners come from Canada, the US and the UK, so here are links to the appropriate Red Cross websites.

The Canadian Red Cross

The American Red Cross

The British Red Cross

Still, I remain committed to the open question which started me down this path: What should a podcast be?

Of course, in order to understand the desired future, we really need to understand the present, and that comes from understanding the past first. Fortunately, this is one of the few historical events where I can say “I was around during the whole thing”, and it’s still early yet.

So, let’s look a the present, shall we? I admit that my view might be limited, as I haven’t been as active myself in recent months, so if you don’t agree with my observations and have other data to add, I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

This was originally a post with several points, but after starting to elaborate on them, I discovered that each one is an essay. So, rather than bury you on my return, here’s the first of them:

Directories Suck (except iTunes.. maybe)

Podcast directories aren’t working — except iTunes. Just out of curiousity, I thought I should look at two of podcast directories I could still name immediately, to see if they were still active: Podcast Alley and Podcast Pickle. Both of these were once the most important places one could list your podcast, the place to get exposure. Now, I’m not so sure… I’m sure they are still made by the earnest people (and the scripts written 5 years ago..) who think they are doing something really good for podcasting, but have no ideas what that should be. Of the two, the Pickle has tried the most things, but seems to garner less attention. The Alley was famous for getting podcasters to grovel to their listeners and direct them there to vote, thus getting them a temporary accolade.

But I look at them now, and I weep a little.

They’ve grown stagnant. Podcast Alley seems permanently frozen in time. The “top 10 podcasts” list seems to have no current podcasts — checking each of them reveals no “recent episodes” beyond early last year, despite the fact that some of the podcasts have definitely continued.

Podcast Pickle looks like it has been on a severe diet, all of its features removed in favour of something slender but ultimately weightless. It still seems to keep current, in some ways, but also has an abandoned feeling — the predominance of spam posts as the most recent activity in the forum is a definitely disturbing sign.

I get the feeling that these are now only automated systems, like some sort of creepy post-apocalyptic horror movie where the heroes have crossed the world searching for the source of a hopeful signal, only to find dusty skeletons seated in front of humming automated systems.

Where’s the passion go? Was it the lack of reward? The desperate monetization phase of podcasting was worrisome at the time, filled with vague dreams of “quitting the day job” and a few — a very, very, very few successful examples. This created a bubble of expectation that burst all over those who ventured, seed money in hand, into this new territory.

It didn’t pan out — at least, not that way. Frankly, the question of monetization is one that plagues everyone once they start working harder on producing good content. The transition from something which was fed from a person’s cognitive surplus to something that requires actual capital has destroyed more podcasts than computer crashes, legal battles or personality conflicts ever will.

And yet…

Podcasts still get produced.

Podcast still are appreciated.

People still want it, and people still do it.

The best analogy I can draw right now is with music. Most bands don’t generally seem to make much of their money from the sales of CDs. They make it from performances and dedicated fans. They don’t need a large slice of the pie, just a big-enough slice. Not everybody commands the superstar status and paycheck of U2 or Adam Curry — and I think that podcast producers should stop thinking that way.

As for directories.. They were necessary when podcasting began, but the swell of social media and the ease of web search makes them largely redundant. The same social network which can deliver news and podcast recommendations across the internet and spread it to the people who want it most may also lead to the ultimate survivability of podcasts, but that’s another topic.

Oh, and iTunes? It has the sycophant’s chance of glory, riding the unstoppable whale of Apple, successful not necessarily because it has any particular merit (although I’ll admit that it’s got some reasonable worth) but because it is an integrated part of a very popular vertical ecosystem.

That seems a bit negative, given that I use iTunes daily, but it hasn’t been doing any really positive things for podcasts for a while, either from the point of view of consumers or producers. As a massive podcasting consumer, I find no real way to organize podcasts properly. As a producer, it suffers from regionalism for its comments (as a Canadian, I don’t easily see non-Canadian — e.g. US or UK — comments and ratings!) and end up largely in the same bucket as every other podcast.

What can be done about this? I mean, it’s fine for me to criticize, but what would I do better? Alright, I’ll accept that challenge!

How’d I’d Make Directories Better

Tags, Not Categories

The days of simple categorization are over. Or rather, categorization is only useful when simple. For more complicated searches, use tags. Encourage people to tag shows — both their own and others. This free-form method of organization is best suited to the always-changing collection of podcasts.

Important Stats: Update Rate, Average Length, Length Deviation, Recency

I don’t really care that a podcast has a thousand episodes — I don’t have time to listen to them (unless they are really, really good!). I care that the podcast has been updated in the last month, or that it tends to update once a week or once a year, or that it has episodes that average 15 minutes in length, or that the deviation of episode length is +/- 60 minutes (shows can vary from week to week by as much as 60 minutes).

Popularity Scores That Age Well

I don’t care if this show is the most popular of all time, if that time stopped in 2008. It’s an amusing statistic, but not helpful. I also don’t care that people voted last month for a particular podcast, because votes are the result of campaigning — especially if you can only vote for one podcast in a group each month.

I care about how many people “like” a podcast — or rather, how many people tend to like each episode, on average.

I care that the subscriptions are stable.

Stop Advertising Crap Repeatedly

I know you have costs to cover, that you hope to make this into a viable business. These are laudible goals. But you are turning me off if I see the same banner ad on four places of each page.

Strip down the advertising, chew up some of the costs, find more advertisers or stop advertising altogether.

Stop crushing the content into small parts of the page and making the auxiliary stuff dominate. Free the space up a bit, tear down the ugly bulletin boards and skyscrapers, put the parks back in..

Oh, and please refresh your look from time to time. Stagnant water doesn’t breed involvement, it breeds flies..

Grow A Community, and Give It Sunshine And Water

No one can afford to fully staff a proper directory. Podcasts come and go too quickly, too numerously. There’s too much work to be put on a few people. But a community is different: it spreads the work.

Wikipedia can’t be done by 5 editors at a major publishing company. It couldn’t be done with 100 of them. It’s done by thousands of volunteers, providing a proper service, a participatory service.

Podcasting is already a participatory community. This doesn’t just mean forums and polls, this means rolling up sleeves, doing things.

Faint Hope Clause

Podiobooks.com impresses me. It’s taken a different route, and it gets better. Constantly. Yes, it’s a specialized place, and it’s as much a content host as a directory, but it actually grows. It does more to advance the fledgling cause of podcasting in a year than any directory has in the last 5 years.

The Last Word

It’s been a while, so perhaps some pent-up vitriol has surfaced. I still have a firm belief in the power of podcasting and that the medium is special and should be advanced, but I grow weary, fearful and bitter when I see it squander the attention and power it already has. At one point, podcast directories were needed to get some grasp on the vast growth of available content, but they never seemed to progress.

What Do You Think?

• With the sudden ubiquity of podcasts, are they now simply just another thing you Google? Are collection points like directories redundant, like the hierarchical directories of the early web (where Yahoo! came from)?
• Are specialized directories the way to go? Or is it all down to the power of social media now, with people cross-linking? Is it all decentralized now, or is there something centralized that is still needed?
• Are directories something like the YouTube of podcasts? If that’s the case, why does YouTube work? Is it because they can play and host them there?
• Are there examples of really good podcast directories out there? I haven’t heard of any lately, but then again, I haven’t really been looking hard. What about defunct directories that had good ideas that should be resurrected?
• What other models from other areas could be applied to podcasting? I mentioned YouTube, but what about others?
• Is the purpose of a directory is promote, expose and allow consumers to find producers? If not, what is it?

As always, comments are welcome and appreciated.

Over time, people who consume and produce media come to regard that schedule as a necessary part of the media. They rely upon it, particularly when there is little media to choose from, or the cost of having lots of media means that limited choices must be made.

But is that still true? Or more accurately, does it apply to newer media, particularly digital-based, globally-accessible media such as podcasts?

There appears to be still considerable advice in this direction. Producers are often strongly encouraged to maintain a regular and reliable schedule of production. But the advice is also muddled, as there is some desire to encourage amateur producers to produce at their own rate. Audiences, too, sometimes react negatively to irregular schedules — particularly the audiences of podcast fiction, who are desperately in need of the next fix, another chapter to get over the hangover of the cliffhanger ending of previous one. But most seem to offer the reassurance that timeliness is less important if its not a core component of the production. (“Daily” newscasts, for example, aren’t much use if not produced each day.)

The relationship of new media to time is further complicated by the easy international scope of the producers and consumers. What does it matter if a podcast is released on 5pm on Tuesday, when that is 1am on Wednesday somewhere else?

Television is the most prominent media of our day. (It’s slipping in impact and importance due to the Web, but its influence is still a legacy.)  The concept of a “season” for a television show marks a beginning and end for a collection of episodes — even if there is no particularly thematic reason to bundle them together.

A typical television season starts in the fall and runs until the next summer. (Summer itself is either considered unimportant or a separate season, strangely.) Interestly, this model has been getting disrupted for a while, possibly strongly impacted in particular by the dubious early cancellation practices of some networks and the near-total creative shutdown from the writer’s strike a few years ago, introducing more commonly what were once rare schedule change-ups such as the “mid-season replacement” and the “short season”.

Other breaks in the scheduling could come from a planned or unplanned hiatus, appearing due to technical production reasons or consumer-impact (and therefore advertising profit) maximization.

But what do these mean to podcasting?

Podcasting is new, but it has been trying to find itself models to emulate. In some ways, it is extremely free, as there is no central standard. Each show can implement their own solution, can decide their own course.

A podcast can determine that it must keep to a rigid production schedule (barring exigent circumstances), or might determine that the schedule is unimportant and that each episode is released when it is ready, and not sooner.

A podcast might follow the television schedule and season model, with episodes produced weekly from September to May, with a brief hiatus in December or for other holidays. Or it might follow a magazine-like season model, where each year is one “season”, starting in January and ending in December, with a possible hiatus in the summer.

Or, you might decide none of these things, and suddenly people are wondering if you are podfading. The term “podfading” refers to the unexpected end of a podcast. Strangely, while the term implies a gradual reduction in the podcast output, it really reflects the gradual realization by its audience that the show hasn’t updated in a while.

This is interesting, because it highlights another problem with the notion of schedules, one that television itself is also facing: the time of production and the time of consumption aren’t necessarily coincidental.

Or, put more simply: “when an episode is published, it’s not necessarily consumed by the audience right away”.

In my own practices as a podcast consumer it is not uncommon to collect several episodes of a podcast together and then listen to them in rapid succession. I’ve heard others say the same.

So, what does it mean to a schedule? At one time, that was the synchronization point between producers and consumers, the hand-off from one to the other of the product. Television gained the desynchronization feature with videotape, but TiVo made it much easier.

Podcasting was born with this ability. It was also born into a world of seemingly limitless choice, a struggle that television found itself discovering when the “500-channel universe” came into existence.

To the best of my perception, television hasn’t solved this problem, but struggles with it constantly. Podcasting offers an interesting testing ground for all sorts of timing theories for media delivery and consumption, and allows much more niche solutions to survive.

What do you think?

• What different timing solutions have you seen?

• How important do you think a schedule is? More significantly, why is it important? What does it make possible or prevent?

• Are seasons important? In some cases, this is obviously true, particularly with drama where a season is a unit of dramatic tension and resolution. But what about it in other cases? Would the Understanding Podcasting podcast, for example, benefit at all from seasons?

• Since there is no cost to staying subscribed to a somewhat dormant feed, is there ever really such a thing as “podfading”? Or is it really just a long delay between episodes or a podcast having ended?

Admittedly, this is not necessarily one of my more coherent posts. I’m a little rusty, and the thinking arose out of trying to find some way to indicate that Understanding Podcasting is not only not gone, but is still an ongoing interest and concern of mine, and will be returning.

However, I realized that I fell into the trap of requiring a schedule for the podcast, and further that the schedule was unrealistic, given my actual available time.

So: Understanding Podcasting has not ended or podfaded, just been on an unexpectedly long hiatus. It will return, however, without a regular update schedule. Instead, it will have a promise that more episodes will appear, as well as more blog posts.

However, in order to make this easier, I’m going to ask something further of you, the audience:

• What theories, ideas, possibilities, standards, errors, issues, good practices, bad practices or other media thoughts or questions do you have in regards to podcasting? What are you interested in? What do you think I should look at and comment on?

Thanks for your patience. New episodes will return soon (ish).

In this case, I’ve become acutely aware of the fragility of receiving and uploading podcasts, given that both aspects of it are being blocked by the fascist administrators running the IT department of my lodgings (in the name of “bandwidth management”; lots of bandwidth available when no content is delivered!).

(I’ll try to keep the vitriol to a minimum, but this issue has my dial cranked up to “really annoyed”. Hey: if I weren’t passionate, I would be less worthy of listening to, right? )

So, back on topic: fragility. When libsyn.com got blocked, I was aghast: suddenly, I realized how much dependence I had on a single company, both for receiving podcasts and for producing them. When apple.com got blocked, I realized I depended on them for finding podcasts, or at least for finding out more information about podcasts.

This is a problem of single point of failure, an appalling heavy dependence that computer science graduates are very aware is a distinct form of sin.

Imagine if the power to your home were dependant on a single, easily-interruptable wire? It seems that way, ultimately, but it’s not easy to interrupt. And anyone who’s had a simple power outage knows that, while there might be temporary interruption, power is usually restored in short order, automatically, as the network reorganizes.

There are other podcast hosting providers out there, and podcast directories, too, but the market is still small. Rather, the ability to easily choke off the consumption or production of podcasts from a few rules seems improper — maybe even illegal.

I’ve tried to suggest that the blocking policies are incorrect and inappropriate, but I’ve met with no sympathy and no movement. Not knowing what avenues I have for recourse, I decided to think of it differently.

Is there a technological solution to this?

Some podcasts can be delivered by Bittorrent, which decentralizes the source, meaning that delivery is no longer dependant on a single place.

But Bittorrent can be blocked, and fairly easily. So we are dependant on a single protocol, as well! And while it can be used to bring podcasts in, it doesn’t (as far as I know) do anything for uploading podcasts.

It’s not just to defeat petty and/or moronic adminstrators that we need to think of this, either, but as a general robustness problem. A plurality of solutions is the way that the web survives — it is built into the very fabric of the Internet, in fact — and we should embrace that in every facet in order to fully be modern.

One method of avoiding these sorts of blocks is through proxies. Since HTTP is the only sort of general-use protocol that seems to be allowed on almost every Internet service, we should consider it our carrier. Since it is easy to block any given name or IP address by rule, we have to have the capacity for a large number of sites — both direct and indirect — that will simply be too big to block.

Alternatively, of course, we could “simply” have so much money that we pay the administrators not to block it, or find the political power to make such blocking illegal. (I, for one, would welcome a “Universal Internet Bill of Rights”, which properly casts it as the immoral act that I feel it is, and makes such blocking internationally illegal.)

But, short of that, consider this: what if your podcast host or web host participated? The power of podcasting seems to be in the community that it builds. What if we can make this not a problem of individuals, but a solution from the collective?

If every podcaster put up a proxy — somehow specifically for podcast transmission (up and down), at least in this initial context — then the number of avenues would grow immensely, and the blocking lists would not be able to keep up.

We would take the community to a whole new — and meaningful — level.

What do you think?

• Am I just acting out of my own bitterness in my local situation?
• Is this sort of thing feasible?
• Is there a better solution?
• Should the communication of podcasting be considered important enough that blocking it is immoral?
• Are there technical reasons why this cannot be done?
• Was I too emotional? I admit, having this particular problem has infuriated me, but also highlighted what must be — or could be — a very big problem.
• Was this article meaningful? Have I strayed too far from my topic?
• In case you are wondering, I’m looking into solutions like proxytunnel as a potential avenue for relief.

Now, for each person to get their calls, they each had their own special ring — one long, two short, that one’s for Martha; two long, that was for the Demerchant farm; three short, that’s for you! This sort of open ringing system meant that, once you got to know the ring, you could see — or rather, hear – who was getting calls.

Since it wasn’t a dedicated line, there was another wrinkle: anyone could pick up the phone and hear and possibly interact in the conversation. The term “party line” probably didn’t refer to the idea that groups of youngin’s could get together and “party” on the line, but I’m sure that it eventually co-opted the term. Imagine: easy conference calling was once an accidental feature more available for rural customers!

Ok, so my (probably inaccurate but hopefully illustrative) history lesson is over. How do I draw the analogy to the podcasting community? I think it has to do with them both being open, rural, evolving, neighbourly and having distinct rings.

Podcasting happens out in the open

Podcasting does not happen behind closed doors. Ok, so the creation of podcasts usually does, but podcasts are presented to the public, on blogs and open RSS feeds. We chat about them openly. Podcasters are some of the most open people in the planet, I’ve found. They almost universally have a blog, Twitter account, public email address and, of course, their podcast. You can approach them at conventions. You can swap war stories of podcast production, share tips, often get involved in their podcast or ask them if they would be involved in yours. They are people with voices who want to share, who don’t mind sharing — and they don’t mind if the world knows it.

There are exceptions of course: private, paid podcasts exist — although all the ones that I can think of all act as additional material to a public podcast. The ultimate try-before-you-buy approach.

Podcasts sometimes feel like a conversation between a group of friends, too, with their own language, their own culture, their own community. But you can eavesdrop on these conversations, get familiar with the community and, if you feel brave enough, you can leap in and participate.

Big city media types can’t get it — it’s happening in the rural countryside

There is sometimes talk of how “podcasting is taking over mainstream media”, but the truth is probably close to “podcasting is drowning mainstream media”. I don’t think that the point should be to become mainstream media — centralized, mass-marketed, least-common-denominator-to-capture-all-people mass media — but rather to offer what is not offered by mainstream media. It serves small communities very well, and I think people are starting recognize that the world is really made up of numerous, distinct-yet-crossing-over, smaller-than-Neilson-can-measure communities.

Podcasting can happen in the major centres of media. In fact, some savvier companies are leaping on-board — although they often don’t seem to be able to distinguish between “advertising” and “content”, and between “region” and “audience” — but they don’t really have much success in adapting. They’re market is “sell the widget that everyone wants”, with their money coming from convincing advertisers that they have the biggest audiences.

That hasn’t worked so far in podcasting and frankly I can’t see it ever working. Podcasting is about niches, because it provides the best advantage to the smaller producer. By keeping their productions basic but their content good, the “amateur” producer can provide to their niches of interest for virtually no (material) costs. The big companies can’t do that.

Podcasting is also ridiculously hard to really judge audience size. Sure, people point to their server statistics as an indication of audience size, but then have to aggregate on-web embedded plays (if they even count them), and try to account for other distributions outside their control.

And what’s a big podcast audience? What’s a small one? How big does it have to be to advertise on?

With the ease of podcast production, the audience will be perpetually saturated. There are no networks, no broadcast restrictions (at least not inherent in the system), no restrictions (aside from music..). Because they have lost their advantages of scale and control, big players can’t make it in this market; only small ones can.

Podcasting ain’t what it used to be — ain’t what it’s gonna be, either

The technology behind podcasting is dead simple: maintain a list of where you can get episodes, and people can get a program to check the list periodically, note what’s changed, and download it. That’s it, really..

Of course, we also add on top of that blogs, forums, podcatchers, portable devices, embeddable chapters, multimedia, (ID3) tagging, media formats, comments, album art, email, phone lines, etc..

But this notion of community came out as a by-product of podcasting technology, a side-effect of it being out there and not a planned part of the idea. It’s flourished as more tech gets added, but the emergent properties aren’t defined by the tech. We need to see what we’re doing right, and try to be more deliberate about it, take advantage of it and leverage it to do more and better.

If podcasting is to survive, it must do this. It must evolve and change, try things — many things, some of which will fail — and try to not stultify, become staid or worse: alienate the very audience it is trying to satisfy.

I’ve seen corporate attempts at expanding podcasting. Some of them work, but many seem to be just applying old media, closed-world, control-and-mass-market approaches. There are some successes (Libsyn and Podiobooks, for example), but we need more, and forward-looking, open technologies.

Can I borrow a cup of sugar?

The podcasting community is made up of friends and neighbours, with a common interest in podcasting and a generous attitude toward the community. I think we recognize this generally, but we should probably keep it in mind, especially when we choose to make it into business.

But where is the community support? Where do podcasters gather to swap stories, seek advice? In a mirror of podcasting itself, the communities seem to be scattered and cliquish. We don’t have one space where things come together, we have a lot of spaces where things are spread apart. There seems to be some need for a more central set of decentralized-but-connected resources, some bringing together of the community — or at least a promotion of what we already have.

There are dozens (if not hundreds) of podcast novel sites out there — but what Podiobooks does well is bring them under one roof, which increases crossover of audience between books. This is vitally important, and something we should probably consider for other genres of podcast.

The most prominent common spaces we seem to have are the undersubscribed and somewhat quiet Yahoo! Podcasters mailing list and the numerous podcast directories out there. General directories are lifeless places, really, no more current and interesting than telephone books. Specific directories, at least minimally curated and organized, with a shared space for niche participants to discuss their craft, interests and discoveries, these are the lifeblood of community. Witness the Audio Drama Directory or Audio Drama Talk.

One ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingy! Is this the party to whom I am speaking?

One last comparison to the party-line: the distinct ring. This one has a more direct analogy: podcast promos. Specifically, the swapping of podcast promos spreads knowledge about other podcasts, is a community-building and community-serving activity. It lets people who are just casually observing them be aware that there is another conversation going on, and that maybe they might want to be interested in it. It is a signal that over there, on that distant hill, in the little lit house surrounded by wide open fields, something might be happening.

And now, a word from our Audience!

Well, my community, what do you think?

• Is there really such a thing as a “podcasting community”? Or is there a better label for it?
• How do we help the community thrive? Or should we do anything at all, given that it is an emergent feature of podcasting?
• What hurts this community? What helps it?
• I’ve drawn a separation between “big media” and “podcasting”, as far as community is concerned. Is this unfair? Is this distinction real, or necessary?
• What other examples of podcasting community do you know of?
• One criticism of the podcasting community is that it is an “echo chamber” – it only echoes it’s own (positive) voices. Is this true? If so, how do we fix it?
• Another criticism of podcasting is that it is too cliquish. I would argue that this is a strength, and not a weakness, a merit and not a problem. What do you think about that? Is clique a natural by-product of a tight-knit community, or a barrier to healthy community growth?
• There are a lot of podcasters out there — estimates place the number of podcasts between 80,000 and 120,000. Does the sheer number of podcasters prohibit any kind of coherent community?
• Do you know of a good estimate of the sizes of podcasting (number of shows, number of listeners, number of genres, averages, etc)? I’m dying to find some.
• Is this article any good? Where have I gone wrong? What other sources or web sites should I consider?