podcasting -- rarely a quality product

[acroyear]

There are two types of podcasting.

1. making your own "radio shows" where you play DJ, as an alternative to setting up a Live365 account with all of its 24/7 support and/or otherwise incurring the wrath of the record industry by distributing pirated material -- podcasts right now are too independent so they don't yet show up on record industry radars.
2. a blog in audio because talking is easier than typing

the former is merely the latest generation of making a mix tape for my friends -- its merely using the internet to do what back in the 80s required giving tapes to your friends, and in the 90s required giving cds to your friends, all the while staying smaller in distribution than napster 1.0 did, so the record company legal shills generally ignore it, having bigger fish to fry.

the latter is often rambling, even if its of the interview variety, and editing a ramble down to a listenable product requires time to edit (bloggers never edit, in general) and with that the tolerance of hearing your own voice (most people don't like their own voice and rarely go back to such productions just because of the cringe factor).

the result?  unless you know the podcaster, podcasts will not be worth the download in 99% of the cases.  even if you do know the caster, consider that unlike skimming a blog entry, its impossible to "skim" audio and still know that you got the point.  people read at their own pace; people have to listen at the pace at which the recording was made.

in this age of information overload, people need to feel in control of their inputs.  podcast-blogs restore control to the blogger at the expense of the audient's sense of control.  very quickly, people will find they simply don't have the time to listen to everything they've been asked to listen to and still find the time to listen to and/or watch that which they already wanted to listen to before the podcast was made.

the podcast blog will die a silent death, very loudly i'm afraid.

Comments

[thatliardiego.livejournal.com]

As Penn Jillette once said about a decade ago -- the bottleneck is not in the technology, it's in the content.

Sucky is sucky, no matter what the transmission device.

[voltbang.livejournal.com]

Never edit? I clicked that spellcheck box less than two weeks ago!

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

So, whose podcasts have you been listening to? Or are you just theorizing?

Doc

theorizing

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

but based on the use of examples described on oreilly.net and things like http://loudblog.de/ . and based on experience. podcasting software makes it easy for audio content to be generated and easy to download, but it doesn't change the fact that you must listen to audio content one second at a time and people simply don't have that kind of time anymore. to make something that is worth the time it takes to listen to it (even just once) takes discipline and experience and a willingness to edit, something bloggers have rarely shown. and as i noted, amatures rarely can tolerate hearing their own voice for long.

exceptions are those where professionals, who are already aware of the need to edit, are being paid to do so. See "nerd tv" for an example. that is the future of pod-casting, once media companies realize what can be done by giving it a budget.

and even so, given my extreme respect for Cringely and his interview subjects, my fascination with the concept, and that they discuss my occuptional field, i have not spent a single second actually downloading the content at all. not even the "edits".

eventually, i'll print up and read the transcripts. why? because i can read at my own pace and get the 1 hour interview read in about 15 minutes over lunch.

granted, those with "nothing to do" may listen...

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

a great time to listen to such professional things is in the morning and afternoon commute as an alternative to talk radio, generic music radio, news and traffic on the 8's, xm or sirius sattelite radio, books on tape (or cd), and one's own possibly huge music collection.

again, the competition for one's ears is fierce. it'll take something very VERY good to take my ears away from that which already makes them comfortable.

Re: granted, those with "nothing to do" may listen...

[scaleslea.livejournal.com]

I was about to say, commuting time makes an excellent chunk of time to listen to podcast format information.

That said, I'd have to agree with you in theory about audio blogs. They have no interest for me, but if someone was to seriously attempt one, they'd have to make themselves pretty darn interesting.

The few podcasts I listen to are primarily informational in nature. If not professionally produced, they're at least produced by amateurs who are attempting to achieve professional results and are passionate enough in their subject matter to come close.

Although my biggest criticism to date is with the professionally produced podcasts: too much title music. Even if I've got an hour to listen to a podcast on a tech subject, that doesn't mean that I have 3-5 minutes to listen to a "theme song" about the show with absolutely no content.

Doc