Slashdot Mirror
Indie Podcasters vs. Big Radio
skepticality writes "The weekly news and business magazine BusinessWeek has an article coming out in this weeks edition that highlights Skepticality, Coverville, AMP, and other indipendant podcasts and podcast networks. The article explains how a small number of indie podcasts are holding their own against the corporate and big-radio shows in the iTunes top 20 rankings." From the article: "In one of the shortest trajectories yet for a new Internet technology, podcasting has gone from the hands of indie developers to media giants in less than a year. Credit Apple. With typical finesse, it has created a centralized, easy-to-use service on iTunes that makes it a snap to find and listen to podcasts, the audio recordings that can be downloaded from the Net and played on a computer or portable music player. Apple also put out a new version of the iTunes software, which makes it easy for people to create their own podcasts, and invited all to post their creations on the site. Indie podcasters such as Kempenaar and Hallgren rejoiced, ready for the mainstream to embrace the technology they had championed."
Seems like some "Big Radio" stations in Australia are embracing podcasting; ABC Radio National at least is offering some of its programs as podcasts here, and it appears to be going very well for RN...
The irony of podcasting is that it was created to circumvent big media companies. The itms top 20 suggests that as much as people love to tell themselves "I hate those clear channel motherfuckers" When it comes down to it, thats all people really want.
for iTunes. I'm sorry but the iTunes top 20 is hardly representative of the current health of indie podcasts. The most recent version of iTunes with podcast support has only been around a short while; I've been using it and it is functionally quite satisfying but I certainly wouldn't trust it's charts as a reasonable way to measure any kind of health in the indie movement.
Promote Charity on Myspace, Show Your Colours!
That is why big stations do market research so that they can target their broadcasts and podcasts to the consumer. A successfull podcaster will have to address the same group (compete) or a group which is now not addressed since it is commercially not attractive. To compete is tough, you have to fight big money, so yes, the big ones win again with this.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me