“The community of podcasting” reminds me of an old-fashioned party line telephone. For those too young to know what that is — and I am just on the cusp, having experienced this technology at my grandparent’s place, never my own — back only a couple of decades ago, it wasn’t feasible to give everyone in a rural area their own phone line. Switching technology wasn’t as advanced as today, and it simply wasn’t worth stringing additional lines or putting up additional boxes or whatever they needed to do to get everyone their own line for customers that lived far enough apart, and didn’t really talk on the phone as much anyway. (No ordering pizza when you are 30km down a winding, possibly unpaved, possibly dirt/mud/rock-strewn roadway..)
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?
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I grew up with a party line and a text prefix – Twin Oaks … it’s been 40 years but I still remember that first phone number. I can’t always remember my current one, but that’s another story.
Your analogy is a good one. I can’t address all these points — not enough time or knowledge — but I’ll toss my two sous in on community.
At something over 100,000 podcasters (numbers are impossible because too many people call themselves podcasters but have no RSS feed) I think it’s important to remember that this group is hardly homogeneous. As you point out in your article there are different genres of podcast and I think each of those probably needs its own community.
Granted, there are some things we share — production, distribution, promotion — but the nature of those things probably doesn’t overlap that much between a fiction podcast and a news podcast, as example. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. It focuses a lot on the production side of the equation and, while that’s helpful for a subset of people, I think the community is a more complex entity.
Taking the Podiobooks community as example of a kind of meta-community. It’s made up of communities of authors/producers and listeners. There is a sort of clique stature to this community but it’s not a closed group by any stretch of the imagination. Listeners can join just by leaving a comment or rating a podcast on the Podiobooks.com site. Others can take a more active role by joining the community ning site. The author/producer group is wide open — with the proviso that you actually have to produce something that’s delivered via Podiobooks. There are a couple of authors working hard to promote their print-only works at the community site and, frankly, they’re not getting a lot of traction because they’re ignoring the group mores re membership.
The complexity doesn’t stop there. Within that community of listeners and authors there are mentors, critics, and casual fans. The community has sufficient flexibility to support all those roles and I would welcome more people who’d take them on. Within all that, we have a group of fans for a particular genre or specific author — even a certain title. It’s like Shrek says, “An ogre is like an onion.” And like Shrek, when you peal the layers away you’re left with a big green beast that you might want to think twice about inviting to dinner.
I think part of the perception of cliquishness is that the barrier to entry — getting to be one of the “cool kids” — is technological. You need to have enough technical savvy to get there. I picture one of those old school floating platforms out in the middle of a summery bay with the cool kids all swimming and partying waaaay out there and a lot of us just can’t swim well enough to get out to them.
Now, whether there’s sufficient community across production platforms — news, music, fiction, etc — to provide cross pollination and support, I’m not sure. I’d love for every listener of the Dragon Page Cover-to-Cover to know about my books, but I’m not sure that most of them don’t already. Being able to talk to Brian Ibbit about Coverville and the music license world might be useful, and he certainly participates in a larger community of music podcasts, Do those two have enough shared values and constructs to form a community?
I don’t know. Seems like the community forms around the subject area, not the technology, which actually goes back to one of your points.
And there’s one more factor I want to throw onto the table. Something that comes from education and sociological research regarding communities of practice. They’re organic. They grow where there’s need. Attempts to force grow them within organizations like schools and businesses fail. They can’t be mandated into existence – not that I’m suggesting you’re doing that – but I think it’s one of those wonderful experimental opportunities we have. With all the communications technology we have available, it’s pretty cheap to run it up the flagpole and see if anybody salutes.
Thanks for your comments! A couple of thoughts..
When podcasting was new, it made sense to have a common community of “podcasters”, but as the size grows, this seems to be less important. Now that the books are written, so to speak, it’s time to turn the focus from the structure to the content. Or something like that. Think about communities of /interest/, not communities of /accident/ or of /common tech/.
Do people who have a certain gadget all gather ’round in a community? Maybe, but is that as coherent a community as people who have a certain gadget and who /use it for a specific purpose/?
There is probably room for both communities, I suppose: your grand, expansive organizations like the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and smaller, local, specialized Linux User Groups (LUGs), as well as groups focussing on content areas. (Sorry, I’m a computer researcher, so it’s where I tend to start thinking..)
I agree, too, that there is a certain amount of “organic growth” in these communities. You can’t start a camp fire without flame, to put it colloquially (and somewhat inaccurately, on a strictly universal basis..). But not having wood does you no good either: the structure around which organic growth can form.
There is a certain amount of community-building that can be done, which can be accomplished using a combination of technology and social organization. You want to target a group that may already exist, but in loose form, and organize them — again, I point to Podiobooks as a good effort in that direction.
But there has to be a certain amount of commonality for it to work. For example, I’ve attended a couple of local Tweetups (“Twitter meetups”) back home. Despite being an avid Twitter user and a local of the area, I found myself without any real commonality between me and the group, except for a few rare occasions. The group felt hollow, manufactured, without a common basis. We weren’t all there to share our common feature — Twitter — but just /because/ of it.
So, while I don’t like the idea of trying to actually manufacture community, I do see a need to support it, and provide the appropriate skeletal tools on which the algae may bloom..
Thanks for stimulating response!
I’ll compare podcasting to Christianity (though I suspect that any “organized” religion would work). It, like my faith, consists of a number of much smaller individual groups that all have a loose, tenuous relationship to one another. “Cliques” develop based on things like technological advantage (as Nate suggests), whether or not a particular sub group “belongs” to the larger group (does not using an RSS feed make one not a podcaster for instance), genre/denomination, and a number of other subtle and not so subtle differences.
Is there ever going to be one community that meets all of our needs? Not without sacrificing something. So it’s either get your needs met deeply or shallowly. And of course belonging to a smaller community doesn’t mean you don’t belong to the larger tenuous one.
I’m not sure that anything can hurt the beast that is podcasting. Now if you narrow down to podcast fiction (as @braindouche often points out is what we’re usually really talking about on Twitter) I’m sure that there are. One thing that can hurt is this notion that there are “cool kids” and not cool kids. Personally from Day One of podcasting I’ve found all of the more well known podcast fiction folks have been very approachable. I didn’t have to swim out to the float to interact with them. I just had to be as respectful as I would be of any other human being.
I hope that everyone in the podlit community knows that we’re all on roughly the same level fame-wise. Granted Nate may have 10K+ listeners and I may only have 1K, but when you pull back a bit that’s not a big difference in the scheme of things. Only a few authors have “made it” and they’re all still approachable in my experience. But there are many folks who, I think wrongly, view those people as celebrities and out of range. I suppose that there are even a few that think that about themselves.
My take on this “community” as loose knit as even the podlit community is is that of the rising tide. The more producers we get, the more content we put out, the more we push each other to do better, the more we all benefit. That’s why I like what Dan Sawyer is trying to do with ANMAP http://www.anmap-foundation.org/. That’s why I think that ignoring the podcasts that aren’t very good instead of helping them be better is a bad idea. I’ve gotten some excellent advice from folks and it’s helping me improve my game. I got it because a) I asked for it and b) people with more skills where happy to help where they had time.
That’s one way we break the echo chamber. I recognize that not everyone is capable of or willing to give and receive public criticism, but you can give it in private and cross your fingers that it will be well received. If it’s not, well I guess you should keep trying. On the receiving end, you should toughen up and take it. I’ve said it before, if you want to move out of the valley then any critique you get in the valley, no matter how tough it is, will seem like a pillow fight compared to what you’ll get in the mainstream. And if you’re satisfied to stay in the valley and keep it on the hobby level I’d think that anyone would want to get better.
We need more public critics. We need more private critics. We need more groups like ANMAP and Podiobooks who offer mentoring. We need to mentor.
Okay drum beating over for now.