Wiley Podcasting Bible
Contents
1. ou ve bought this book or maybe you re reading this first page to get an idea about podcasting Either way you ve heard about the explo sion in listenership for podcasts the self produced programs made possible by ubiquitous cheap computing power that has replaced expensive studio production equipment You ll find everything you need to know about the creative and technical challenges because there are still many ahead of you that you ll face as you begin the adventure of producing audio pro grams for your friends family company or a global audience What Is Podcasting Just two years ago at this writing the idea of a podcast made its first appearance on the scene Already as many as 10 000 people are podcasting and as many as 15 million listeners are downloading and listening to audio programming through Real Simple Syndication RSS channels Early pod casters are earning a living from their work while others have launched serv ice businesses that deliver audio production for commercial clients But for most the vast majority podcasting is about one to few communication facil itated by IP based networks and simple tools see Figure 1 1 27 IN THIS CHAPTER What is podcasting Why podcasting is different Podcasting for every listener O Partl Podcasting Where It Came From and Where It s Going The tools of the podcaster s trade 28 The basics you need to do a p2. Archive Account l Publish and store video audio and other media that you created Share and discover independent media Connect to a global community Leam how to create citizens media Free storage amp bandwidth forever Do NOT post other artists copyrighted works without permission Ourmedia is about showcasing your creativity Register now re OurMedia s message Share and share alike However podcasters have to know to go to these sites and upload their programs and if they want to protect the content they are left on their own In the former case society loses out and in the lat ter audiences and producers lose As podcasting matures a full range of business and sharing mod els will be needed to preserve the creative efforts of so many people 32 Stars Being Born Everyday Dawn and Drew honest sex and marriage A gt Podcasts gt The Dawn and Drew Show WORLD DOMINATION BABY Thats not to say that Dawn and Drew are a success because they make money Rather they would probably be doing this show anyway because the stories the bickering the funny criticisms and witticisms seem to flow out of these two They exemplify the kind of honest passion that can be captured by a microphone and find an audience Anyone can build a business on this technology but it still takes talent and a kind of excitement that makes producing a show thrilling every time the mic goes live Another cou
3. according to Winer podcasts were engineered specifically to defy advertisers efforts to include promotional content in podcasted programs If you re not using MP3 you re probably trying to make podcasting into a replay of previous media Winer wrote on November 12 2005 the day after an advertising tracking service was introduced by Audible Inc By design podcasting took a poison pill at the very beginning of its life that made it impossible for the corporate types to subvert it without fundamentally changing what it is Thats why I was sure that Audible wasn t doing podcasting Basically MP3 can t be rigged up to serve the purpose of advertisers and that s why I love MP3 And only MP3 provides the portability and compatibility that users depend on Any other method will force them to jump through hoops that they will resist If so then podcasting isn t for the advertisers 29 O Partl Podcasting Where It Came From and Where It s Going 30 Winers initial choices about podcasting technology reflect that he served the poison pill Yet by the time he wrote this podcasts were being delivered in many different file formats including Quicktime files that played on Video iPods from Apple Computers Inc The cat was out of the bag and new uses must and will be found for podcasting or users will route around the rigid boundaries In fact if podcasting is going to remain relevant and we think it will the techno
4. Voices make the podcast For the past 85 years since commercial radio first appeared audiences have become accustomed to a narrow range of voices that are professional usually deeper than the ordinary speaker and paced like a race or a seduction but decidedly not like everyone normally speaks Podcasts break that monopoly In less than a decade commercial radio has descended into crisis as audiences flee to the Internet in the form of streaming and downloadable programming not to mention the allure of paid commercial free radio broadcast from satellites in space Podcasts burst on the scene in late 2004 claiming thousands of listeners in the first few months and mil lions within a year Depending on which research firm you believe between 30 million to 50 mil lion people will be podcast listeners by the end of the decade The monopoly that was radio is broken dismantled kaput A Podcast for Every Listener Podcasting began with voices just like radio The first podcasters were also the mediums creators hacking together technologies to make the programs they recorded available and they will be remem bered for their contributions people like Frank Conrad the Pittsburgh based radio operator who first turned his ham radio transmitter into a foundation for popular entertainment Conrad s audi ence grew through the auspices of a store that sold radios and advertised on his station Eventually the station became KDKA in 1920 t
5. audience at retail locations and conferences a kind of Tonight Show that makes obsoles cence fun finding new stuff to buy is entertainment LaPorte manages to turn almost everything he does into a podcast offering a variety of specialized programs such as Inside the Net that serve parts of his audience A news background trains the mind to make use of so many parts of every recording and experience because news is made on a strict budget now more than ever The last area where podcasting has just started to take hold is in business where a budget is appre ciated too As a medium podcasts enjoy a special quality of taking little time to produce Podcasts are a natural for marketing and engaging customers in discussion about a company s products and services With less than two years behind it podcasting hasn t provided the business world enough examples of success to make it a major movement but like the Web television and radio before it will happen Corporate podcasts might be marketing vehicles and companies certainly will find a way to spon sor audio delivered via RSS and download Advertisers have begun making noise about the millions even billions they want to put behind new programs Think though about how simple it is today to start your relationship with customers From a local nursery that prints the URL for its podcast about gardening on its sales receipts to chains that distribute fliers at retail outlets advertisin
6. e 1 2 Dawn and Drew became some of the first to go pro as podcasters earning their living on podcasting after a year on the air Their show is sponsored and they won a slot on Sirius Satellite Radio The couple has become something like celebrities but not quite so full of bull as most of what passes for celebrity because it is not manufactured but captured in sound The Longer Tail odcasting s history is evaporating as quickly as storage limits for hosting accounts fill up We can t tell you what Adam Curry said because there s no copy of the file accessible through any links exposed by Google and other search engines Podcasters are often forced to purge their archives to keep their costs low yet all these older programs make up the long tail the vast catalog of content that can serve the incredibly diverse interests of listeners for many years but only if the programs remain available What made the long tail interesting in the first place was the notion that at a site like iTunes or Amazon which make available titles that couldn t be stocked in a retail store on CD or on shelves was the fact that almost every title would sell in a year The problem podcasting has is a shortage of storage which organizations like The Internet Archive http www archive org and Our Media http www ourmedia org are seeking to ameliorate by providing free storage to content that can be freely reused n Requires Internet
7. e primary popularizer of the medium during its first year E Podcasts are fun and personal studied and slapstick You don t need to copy anyone to be an original but the pioneers in the format have paved the way at considerable expense There is a lot to learn from them E The first paid circulation podcast was The Ricky Gervais Show which featured Gervais the star of the BBC The Office sitcom his Office co creator Steven Merchant and Karl Pilkington who acts inexplicably stupid it s a wonder he s survived in this Darwinian world E In this book for would be podcasting pros we emphasize how to make money with pod casts in spite of the mediums original design which attempted to prevent advertising and money making Theres no reason you have to try to make money with your podcast and if you just want to have fun you ll learn everything you need to know here but if you do want to make money this is the book for you In the next chapter we walk through the technologies and development of podcasting an already riotous history that includes bickering counterclaims to inventions and stealth attempts to rewrite the story On that foundation you learn what these developments can lead to including new mar kets for your creative work and the applications for podcasting in corporate and marketing settings 35
8. g a contest that like American Idol brings the voice of the customer to the world through a podcast the possibilities for programming are endless Stars Being Born Everyday aoo Summary Podcasts speak this book can t be heard We give you the gospel in these pages even as the pod cast revolution continues at breakneck pace Making podcasts learning the tools you ll need to use and understanding the distribution options and their implications for your budget are all that stand between you and those possibilities E Podcasting builds on a broad range of media and Internet developments including failed notions such as push technology and the foundations of the Web and blogging includ ing hyperlinks RSS and news aggregator applications E The basic tools for producing your podcast are a microphone and recording device typi cally one s computer and the software for editing a raw recording into a finished show On the distribution side you need to set up or purchase space on a Web server E Developer Dave Winer made and distributed the first podcast on August 12 2004 though many programs known as podcasts today predate his Morning Coffee Notes podcast The key innovation was the combination of RSS and sound files delivered as enclosures E Adam Curry and a number of other people contributed to the development of the first podcast receiver application known as a podcatcher Currys Daily Source Code podcast was th
9. he first licensed commercial radio operation in the United States In podcasting the voices began with Dave Winer whose Morning Coffee Notes were among the first to be delivered via RSS On his first program from August 12 2004 Winer related his ideas about blogging and journalism beginning with a story of hellish travels Good afternoon everybody This is your friend Dave calling in checking in from New York where its hot and humid You can tell that you can hear the sound of the air conditioner in the background probably Had a very eventful trip across the country yesterday Winer s podcasts allowed him to evangelize the technology itself As one of the creators of RSS he was interested in finding other uses for the XML Extensible Markup Language syndication format that let bloggers offer subscription services of their text feeds Podcasting became its own best mar keting in Winers hands as well as those of former MTV VJ Adam Curry who introduced his Daily Source Code program on August 13 2004 Unfortunately the early episodes of Daily Source Code are no longer available on the Web but the show combined Curry s patter with his favorite independent music and mash ups of popular music that he made himself Currys promotion of other podcasters was critical to the evolution of the medium because he became one of the most reliable sources in the early days of new podcasts Fairly soon several podcast i
10. listening day providing users who download programs the ability to start and stop a program at will to listen at their leisure to programs at any time of the day or night The result of this bidirectional freedom is a media environment where programming is offered by producers and selected and listened to by people on a fluid schedule and under a far broader range of business models than were possible before Add to this easy to distribute environment the element of portability a podcast can be loaded onto a variety of portable devices from MP3 players to wire less telephone handsets and the location of the listener has been radically transformed No longer does listening to a program on the Web mean having to be tethered to your computer Just export the show to your iPod and go Thousands if not millions of different messages can be delivered through a podcast What blogs are to the newspapers podcasts are for radio deconstructing the strict order of the mass media marketplace Where radio and audio production have been rarified professions in the mass media era the relentless march of Moores Law has brought the tools and distribution networks that made those mass media expensive to experiment with and compete in to a generation known as podcast ers This book is your guide to producing programs and forging new channels of communication between your coworkers or family that are as easy to use as e mail Stars Being Born Everyday aoo
11. logy will be extremely pliant supporting many file formats and many more business models Had the inventors of the personal computer decided what kind of projects it could be used for the PC would have been designed for failure In fact one of the fathers of the PC Alan Kay says today that the prob lem holding back the personal computer today is reliance on the narrow range of ideas he helped think up in the 1970s Why Podcasting Is Different The unique thing about podcasting is the flexibility it enables for both producers and the audience Both producers and audiences enjoy immensely more freedom today than they did in the broadcast schedule Creative people whether voice talent writers or ordinary people with a passion about almost anything from their hobby to the history of their family or a project at work can find an audience Even small audiences are eminently reasonable in podcasting because the costs of pro ducing and delivering programs are so low that any niche interest can be served We saw the same phenomenon in publishing with the advent of computer desktop publishing when a flowering of small magazines suddenly appeared to serve incredibly focused markets and newsletters sprouted in every industry and at every company Listeners too are freed in an important way The schedule they listen on is in their hands not controlled by the broadcaster who delivers the shows Podcasts allow the complete reordering of the
12. ndices offered links to new podcasts which gave rise to what can only be called surprising new programs Out of those lists early stars rose Dave Slusher who d done some radio in school and performed computer programming services in South Carolina for a living was among the first to grab a loyal audience Slusher riffs in his program Evil Genius Chronicles about his day the news culture technology and coding over a music track The effect he was aiming for was similar to National Public Radio s This 31 Podcasting Where It Came From and Where It s Going American Life but what he created was uniquely Dave Slusher What did it do for Slusher His Evil Genius Chronicles podcast became a source of revenue from sponsors and the sale of a small collec tion of Evil Genius t shirts as well as advertising revenue from his blog which saw more traffic The show also made people aware of his coding skills bringing him consulting work and basically making his effort to earn a living more flexible than he dreamed it could be The podcast is for most people another piece in a complex puzzle that makes an economic life possible But it won t always be so Dawn Miceli and Drew Domkus a married couple living on a shuttered dairy farm in Wisconsin launched a funny truthful show about marriage their marriage and everyone else s that com bined banter and sex sometimes recorded for The Dawn and Drew Show see Figur
13. odcast A microphone and recording device which could be an old tape player a solid state recorder or your personal computer editing software and a place to host the resulting program This sounds like a lot of pieces but compared to the complexity of produc ing and distributing a radio or television program a decade ago podcasting is self produced media realized In a nutshell a podcast is according to Wikipedia a direct download file but the sub scription feed of automatically delivered new content is what distinguishes a podcast from a simple download or real time streaming This is a description of many different services that pre date the introduction of podcasting a more accurate definition in our opinion is this A podcast is a series of audio or video programs delivered through a static URL containing an RSS feed that automatically updates a list of programs on the listeners computer so that people may download new programs using a desktop application Programs can be delivered to the lis tener automatically or when they choose to download them Already there are variations on this definition because podcasts can be delivered directly to hand held devices without the intervention of a desktop computer or software Likewise podcasts have changed radically as video has been added to the mix Originally podcasts were simply MP3 files a widely used audio format Today podcasts include MP4 and other video file forma
14. ple Rob and Dana Greenlee created WebTalk Radio long before podcasting came along migrating to the new distribu tion technology when it swept away streaming as the preferred way to get audio over the Internet Dana Greenlee says the problem is that after years you start to think about producing as time to make doughnuts oh well Indeed Wired Magazine wrote about podfading the tendency for programs to disappear as producers lose interest Keeping the excitement in a podcast is critical whether youre going to deliver it to the world or to a small group But the Greenlees have enjoyed many rewards for their efforts including executive jobs won by Rob and Dana s becoming the first podcaster for CBS Television where she produced shows about the Fall 2005 television shows offered by CBS Their podcasts were far less expensive than the radio program they d previously produced since they no longer had to pay for airtime on local stations and their audience was dramatically expanded both geographically and in size by the move to downloadable audio Performers have shown the way to success as well Robby Gervais star of the BBC s The Office launched his podcast with friends Steve Merchant and the astonishingly funny Karl Pilkington see Figure 1 3 The first season when it was hosted by the Guardian Unlimited a London based online newspaper site achieved a huge audience as many as 250 000 per episode more than mos
15. t cable channels can expect The show is funny and is clearly a performance for no one can be quite as dense as Karl Pilkington pretends to be Gervais an accomplished actor and comedian took his experience in radio to pod casting building a show on quick transitions between conversational segments very like radio For these guys who have worked together in media for years the performance is natural They ve practiced their enthusiasm as their work and their natural humor shines through 33 O Partl Podcasting Where It Came From and Where It s Going CURE s Karl Pilkington genius stupidity as performance art speed The precise moment that Ricky told Kari that in a vacuum a feather and a hammer fall at the same 34 Gervais broke new ground when he partnered with Audible Inc to offer the first subscription pod cast The Ricky Gervais Show charging 6 95 for six shows which is now in its third season The podcast also reinforces his relationship with fans and is just part of the total Gervais package Journalists too have made the transition to podcasting Since the podcasting world began in and amidst technology it was natural that some of the most successful podcasts would be about tech nology This Week in Technology or TWiT hosted by Leo LaPorte a radio and television host for many years is a well sponsored program that provides technology news and reviews often in front of a live
16. tocols allow any developer to add the ability to query a server to retrieve content to its application or Web service and most importantly podcasting allows anyone to place a program into distribution without having to go through an intermediary host that aggre gates many channels of information Pointcast is unneeded in many podcasting scenarios because the podcaster can communicate directly with the listener At its founding podcasting was designed to subvert the economic equations of existing media thwarting not just the role of the aggregator but also the advertiser a See Chapter 2 Podcasting s Meteoric Trajectory for a more complete history of the S development of podcasting But much about podcasting remains controversial because of those initial assumptions about the revenue models or lack thereof Discussion of podcasting is difficult because it is so young The people who helped launch the industry are very particular about what is a podcast and what isn t Moreover they are vocal about it We ll cover these controversies throughout this book but they can be summarized by saying that the technology is frequently mistaken for a genre That is people talk about podcasts like the form is a kind of poem or book turning definitions of what a podcast should be into a kind of reli gious argument Podcasts according to programmer Dave Winer one of the people credited with inventing the technology should be free in fact
17. ts as well as other audio formats such as Windows Media Ogg Vorbis and Audible that support subscription based and advertising based podcast business models Stars Being Born Everyday If you remember something called push technology from the late 1990s podcasting may sound familiar Companies like PointCast Inc distributed client software that periodically polled network servers downloading massive amounts of topical content including audio and video programming dumping older content from the users hard drive to make room for the new material Pointcast s audi ence could browse the new content without any network latency which was the rule in those dial up times It was the first attempt at non streaming rich media delivery but push was doomed to fail by its business model which front loaded costs for everyone producers paid for distribution and Pointcast incurred massive bandwidth and technology development expenses that killed the company before it could convert its audience into advertising revenues The audience got everything for free although Pointcast had plans to offer subscription based programs before it collapsed well in advance of the rest of the Internet bubble s bursting However push technology and podcasting are significantly different Podcasting is built on open source foundations Instead of concentrating the distribution channel in the hands of a few compa nies like Pointcast podcasting pro
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