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Is Podcasting on the Way Out?

John Gartner writes that podcasting’s 15 minutes of fame are almost over and he is taking a lot of flak for that in the comments of his blog. His evidence is the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project poll (you can read the report here in pdf format). Given that none of the commenters talk about the actual report but only about the BusinessWeek story about it, let’s have a look at the actual data:

Percentage who have downloaded a podcast
(as groups of internet users) February-April – 2006 August 2006
Total internet users 7% – 12%
Men 9% – 15%
Women 5% – 8%
Age 18-29 10% – 14%
Age 30-49 8% – 12%
Age 50-64 5% – 12%
Age 65+ 4% -4%

So obviously people are trying to listen to podcasts, but they don’t stick around. Only 1% of users downloads a podcast regularly. One data point that makes me especially nervous is that young people care as little about podcasts as the 50-64 year olds. And of course we are still faced with the old question whether those who download ever even listen…

I think Gartner has a point: podcasting can only linger on the slow burner for so long. If the podcasting industry wants to make a dent into the media market that goes beyond reaching 1% of US households, things have to change fast (though it is a global medium for sure, Europe at least has adopted podcasting even less than the US). Basically, podcasting needs something akin to a Paris Hilton sidekick hack (which is what brought digg.com to the masses). I think it has no more than a year to do so, or the marketers and listeners will move their attention somewhere else.

All we have so far is podshow’s lame attempt at a myspace clone.

Mediashift’s Mark Glaser has anther very in-depth discussion about the Pew results that are definitely worth reading. Money quote:

My gut feeling is that podcasting still has a lot of potential, but that the entire process for subscribing, uploading and managing podcast content needs to be streamlined and simplified to gain more mainstream usage. Madden also brings up the possibility that podcasting has many other media to compete with, and that there’s some confusion among the public about podcasting being tied exclusively to iPods (something Apple probably doesn’t mind).

The name is a problem, for sure, but, and Glaser acknowledges this, it is only part of the problem. So podcasters – what are you going to do about this?

Technorati Tags: pew, podcasting, fame, adam curry, 15 minutes, podcasts, podcastalley

It seems like I’ve answered all these issues…

1. Audio podcasting on the desktop will never become big, there’s just too much competition and the competition is more compelling (video, web pages, application…). Audio competing with video is a fool’s errand.

http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/10/audio-on-desktop.html

2. Podcasting to mobile devices has way too much friction in the process to catch on. http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/friction.html

3. Most podcasts are WAAAAY too long and come out far too infrequently to build a brand.

http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/10/brevity-is-soul-of-wit.html
http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/do-show-every-day-no-matter-how-short.html

4. The time it takes for podcasts to propagate from creators to mobile devices is far too long to make time sensitive information interesting. John Madden does a daily podcast, his monday podcast is the monday night match up. It has a shelf life of 4 hours.

http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/timeliness.html

4a. News/current events drives talk radio. The time it takes for podcasts to propagate from creators to mobile devices is far too long to make time sensitive information interesting.

5. Unless you come up with metrics better than “downloads” advertising and sponsorships are a fantasy.

http://foneshow.blogspot.com/2006/11/without-auditable-metrics-youre-just.html

Couldn’t agree more with you Erik. especially with point 4.

Point 1 and 3: those really depend on the producers – I would hope most understand that they can’t compete with video

Point 2 – too much friction can probably be overcome, but I don’t see much activity in that arena. All the podcatchers are pretty much the same.

Point 5 – absolutely – but what is that new metrics?

One of the oft-overlooked benefits of podcasting in a B2B use is its power as a publishing mechanism. Companies need to publish, more than ever. Yet few people can write well enough, quickly enough to “feed the beast” on an ongoing basis. Some bloggers do this well, but to tap the tactit knowledge and expose the information welled up inside of companies, a quick phone call between the inside and outside experts can generate a huge amount of high-quality, balanced content — fast. So the transcript and the audio become the cores from which companies feed their blogs, websites, mar-com, SEO, and build-out the dialogue that attracts and holds the communities that are their future.

Dana, I think that is a very interesting perspective. As I have no experience in the B2B world, I can’t really comment on how podcasting works (or can work) in that environment, but I think you are on to something.

My experience is in the world of academia, and there, podcasting is a four letter word, especially in the humanities, which are often very closed off silos (in every negative way you can think of) where trying to communicate with non-experts (or sometimes even colleagues) is looked upon as a waste of time.

I think sometimes we may be to fast in bashing trends.
See my small cartoon:
http://geekandpoke.typepad.com/geekandpoke/2006/12/trendbashing.html

Bye,
Oliver

Nice cartoon Oliver!

What concerns me is that podcasting isn’t much of a trend anymore, at least in the mainstream. It seems to be plateauing right now (at least according to some of the anecdotal evidence I have heard from podcasters) and something or someone has to come along and get the train moving towards reaching a general audience besides the techie folks that listen right now.

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Frederic, the “new metrics” are exactly what we’re delivering with Foneshow. The traditional podcast delivery method can’t tell you what’s done with the downloaded content, whether people actually listen to it, or how much of it they listen to; if they forward it to a friend or if it motivates them to find out more; we can, and we can tell you exactly where in the podcast they hung up, forwarded, or “clicked”. Contact me or Erik if you’d like to join the beta and see how this works.

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i just starting Podcasting and i find it very exciting. it is my second hobby aside from blogging.