The power of the little voice

<![CDATA[Folks, there's a wave building to realize the dream of audioblogging at a scale few people could have anticipated. A week ago if you Googled “podcasting,” you’d have found a couple dozen references to the term. Today, as I write, the search produces 12,900 results. That’s some tipping point behavior, if you ask me.
A couple years ago, when a few of us were posting audio on blogs, there was talk about someday, when there would be a system for sharing audio conveniently so that people could program their own listening. Dave Sifry and I discussed hiring people to read blogs for a radio program at that time.
Rob Greenlee at WebTalkRadio was cutting a deal with Microsoft to distribute his show through Windows Media Player and, as a result, the program boasts more than a million listeners a month today. The appearance of iPodder, an application that routes audio from the net to iTunes playlists, from Adam Curry, who also produces the program Daily Source Code, upstart content creators like Dave Slusher of EvilGeniusChronicles and myriad other technology and creative folks is taking all the talk and making it real.
The reason iPodder is wicked cool is that it automates the delivery of audio files to a portable device. This functionality is going to be breaking out all over, but iPodder broke the conceptual barrier. Howard Greenstein provides an excellent summary about how to get these programs if you don’t have an iPod. Just wait, there is a tidal wave of this kind of functionality just around the corner.
Likewise, there are a slew of tools for producing audio that can be distributed through these new channels. If you look at this picture of the WebTalk studio, you’ll see a lot of equipment you don’t need anymore. Most of the functionality needed is available on the Mac or PC today, using a standard microphone and applications like Skype to connect guests to a host for recording direct to hard disc.

A million people are listening to this studio
All this points to an environment in which almost anyone can produce a program and, with a little luck and marketing skill, get it to millions of listeners. Al Gore’s INdTV network, which is hiring, is predicated on the same ideas applied to video (see my Red Herring posting about this). The result is a seriously large shift in media.
Add to that the fact that an established star like Howard Stern can get a half-billion dollar deal to take his show to satellite radio and the Internet and you can see the end of the line for media companies based on mass audiences. However, what’s missing is an economic model and that’s where the real fun will be, because it’s likely that smaller companies that can provide a way for break-out producers to turn their talent into a fortune are going to have a heyday.]]>