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Podcast Directories

Garrick van Buren has some interesting thoughts on podcast directories.

Now my feeling has been that the overabundance of directories isn’t very helpful. Take Odeo for example. They just pretty much switched their layout so that the podcast directory has more or less disappeared. Why? It doesn’t have any traction. To be in their Top 40, 300 listeners are enough. That’s not a phenomenon worthy of New York Times coverage. They have switched on their podcast creation tools, but come on guys. Podcasting is not blogging. The cost of entry is so much higher in term of time invested and soul bared. There are only so many people out there comfortable enough with their voice to broadcast it around the world. There is no market for this kind of stuff and I see Odeo closing the doors sooner or later (my prediction – before the summer of 2006).

Also, as of right now, there simply isn’t a market for more podcast directories.

Podcast Alley is still kicking around, but lets face it, the only directory out there that matters is iTunes. Being featured on iTunes is what drives podcasts over the edge.

This monoculture is a horrible situation as well. What if Apple decides the whole experiment isn’t worth the time and just drops the project? Nobody there to stop them from doing so.

Now lets get back to Garrick’s post. He talks about Google as a good podcast directory, but only if you know what you are looking for. But I don’t know. Here we are, talking about the goodness of social bookmarking, networking etc. There must be an alternative to this. Maybe a digg.com for podcasting would be a good idea. Maybe a recommendation mechanism that is more straightforward than voting at Podcast Alley. Something like Garrick’s five stars at the bottom of his page.

Garrick proposes a more tagging oriented approach so that more nuances of the content are captured. Not a bad idea, but so far, there are only a limited number of podcasts out there and many podcasters are happy to be part of one of those categories offered. So it is not a problem today. The problem is to find interesting shows. Personal recommendations and ratings are the way to go, I think. That’s where directories are failing right now, because iTunes doesn’t have this mechanism, Podcast Alley’s voting has been controversial since its inception and no other directory matters. Time for a new one?

Anyway, enough ranting. Interesting post on Work Better. Read it if you haven’t done so.

So, why are all the directories shoehorning podcasters into 15 main, meaningless sections when each podcaster could declare their own unique categories – plural – and standout?

A single-dimension directory is like trying to make money hosting podcasts or sanitizing telephones – it’s only fulfilling at the most cursory level. This is why Google is still the best podcast directory – it takes very specific queries, ones with multiple qualifiers. Then returns fulfilling results.

Bringing me to the podcast directories splogging up the search results. Yes, podcast directories are guilty of the same crime as the the other PageRank-loving sploggers – taking an RSS feed and republishing it for higher placement. 6 of the 10 items on the first page of Google results for “first crack podcast” are directories echoing one another. This redundancy makes each result less valuable.

» The Problems with Podcast Directories » The Work Better Weblog » Working Pathways, Inc

technorati tags: podcast alley, podcasting, bookmarking, web 2.0, social web, odeo, work better, van buren, itunes, apple, digg.com

At this point yes, the only directory that matters is iTunes – but not for findability, for subscribability. Even more than Google, the iTunes interface biases finding what you know (historically unknown stuff didn’t magically appear within iTunes). The benefit of being in the iTunes directory having the ‘1-click subscribe in iTunes’ button on your site.

Garrick,

I absolutely agree with you. I had hoped for iTunes to be a fresh start for podcasting, with everybody starting from point zero again. That didn’t happen. The iTunes interface is indeed a self-fullfilling prophecy with recommended shows always doing well, while it is impossible to decided what other content might be good and interesting. That’s why I would like to see more direct user recommendations in iTunes, not just the (hidden and secretive) editorial staff making that decision for me. Podcast Alley does that well, but it doesn’t have the leverage of iTunes.
So yeah – Google to find, iTunes to subscribe. Maybe somebody can write a plugin to mash the two up…

[...] I just noticed the guys over at odeo.com took note of my post on Podcast directories last week. Here is their reaction: The Last Podcast: “Podcasting is not blogging. The cost of entry is so much higher in term of time invested and soul bared. There are only so many people out there comfortable enough with their voice to broadcast it around the world.” There’s truth to this “soul bared” stuff and that’s one of the strengths of voice—the vast amounts of nuanced metadata along for the ride. You don’t need a smiley made out of assorted punctuation at the end of a sarcastic comment when you’re actually speaking. It’s also why we’ve created ways for people to record their voice and share it with just one or a few other people. Check back with us next summer and see if we’ve closed our doors Now let me say that I had great hopes for odeo after reading about them in the New York Times and signing up early to get my early (now defunct) podcast listed. However, their directory never took off, even though it was far better executed than Podcast Alley or even iTunes. It is a shame that the directory is now basically buried. I agree that voice allows for more nuanced communication. Yet, while voicemail attachments to email have been available forever, they never caught on. At the end of the day, I just don’t see much of a market for what they are doing right now. Creating a way “for people to record their voice and share it with just one or a few other people” sounds good. But hey – just give them a call. Leave a voicemail. Send an email. A handwritten letter.  I just can’t see myself using it beyond as a novelty – maybe others do? Am I out of the loop?  Besides, when we write, we have a lot more time to think about what we are saying. When speaking and recording, we are often highly aware of what we say and how stupid it might sound. So I stick to my “soul barred” argument here.  Also, let’s not forget that the amount of work is not just on the creator’s side, the listener also invests time into listening to the message – far more than in reading (or skimming through) an email. And what about those who can’t listen at work. Maybe there are even no speakers attached to the computer… After all is said and done, I wish them the best of luck – their product is great for what it wants to do – I just don’t think a lot of people will use it. With that, I stand by my prediction of them going under by the middle of 2006.Technorati Tags : odeo, podcasting, last, podcast [...]