THE BIRTH OF THE PODCAST
A debate is going on for a long time on the first ever podcast created. But first, let’s talk about who invented the podcast. Adam Curry, a former MTV VJ, and software developer Dave Winer are attributed for creating the podcast. Dave Winer has been a pioneer in many things, specifically blogging here, and also created RSS- ‘Really Simple Syndication ‘. A software developer, who then came up with new media varieties built software to make those media varieties workable. Adam Curry has been a fan of Dave’s work on RSS and wanted to pitch his idea of blogging technology for sending digital audio files.
Now that we are talking about the birth of the podcast, did you know, it was born in a hotel room in New York City in October 2000? It is in this room where Adam shared his passionate idea to make use of the internet to reshape audio, radio, or any form of sound, and said RSS was the best medium for this. Though Winer didn’t quite understand the idea, he went ahead by making changes to RSS to carry out the plan Adam drafted and created the first feed for the podcast. This feed contained the song US Blues by the Grateful Dead and eventually more of its songs were added to this feed.
But this audio blog did not have many listeners and those who heard this feed were questioned about sharing audio files through RSS. This way the plan of audio blogging was put to a halt until Winer met Chris Lydon and proposed him into making the first episode of Open Sources. This recording was published on 9th July 2003 and turned out to be the first original production of audio blogging.
COINING THE NAME-PODCAST
Before the word ‘podcast’ was formed it was initially known as ‘audio blogs. In February 2004, British Journalist Ben Hammersley wrote for The Guardian that due to the growing usage of RSS an audible revolution was taking place and what this can be called. “Audio Blogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?”. Now we know what name stuck. Ben said that the word ‘Podcast’ was curated in just 5 seconds to meet up the deadline for that article. During that time, the rise of the iPod, the affordability of audio production software at home, and __blogging that had started to dominate the web; made Hammersley come up with the word ‘Podcast’, a portmanteau of ‘iPod’ and ‘broadcast’
JOURNEY OF PODCASTING
As 2005 rolled in the word podcast took the hype and started gaining traction. It was in this year that the New Oxford American Dictionary titled ‘podcast’ the word of the year and firmly established the podcast as the emerging media trend. The first DIY guide to podcasting named Podcasting: Do-it-yourself guide was published the same year, by Todd Cochrane, a broadcast producer, and podcasts started its race to enter the mainstream. In 2006, Steve Jobs demonstrated the creation of podcasts to a live audience using Apple’s free GarageBand software during a keynote address. The year following that, podcasts started earning recognition for the massive audience it accumulated. Comedians and Radio personalities thrived in the initial days of podcasting. After some years podcasting reached a stage where it made a place in people’s hearts and bred its celebrities, rules, and pathbreaking success. This also led the already established media companies to overtake a substantial part of the podcast industry just by repackaging popular radio and TV series to dominate the charts. By 2019 it was said that more than 160 million has listened to a podcast. This massive interest in the medium brought an inevitable shift that was bound to occur- ‘the era of podcasting’.
Though podcasting was initially celebrated for being an independent medium, a prime part of the industry is now following the footsteps of other mainstream media. It might appear that podcasts are getting swallowed up by huge media companies, but let’s not forget that podcasting is quite young, it turns 18 today- and has a lot of scope in its coming years.
PODCAST NOW
The pandemic gave rise to in-home content creation and podcasts were not disparate. It motivated independent creators to build communities, start working and entertain the audience while they were stuck at home. This saw a tremendous growth in podcast listening in the year 2021 as compared to 2020 and 2019.
Podcasts, now, have slowly and gradually become a part of mainstream media. The listeners are urban, very well connected to the online world, and strongly engaged in the content. Accessibility and easy sharing of audio content completely changed the way the content is distributed. Thus, the number of podcasters and listeners are increasing exponentially. To satiate this humongous crowd of listeners, podcasts have branched into many genres, styles, and topics with celebrity podcasts driving the major visibility. With so many options out there, one can try something new and worth listening to every single time!
If you also want to start your podcasting journey, you can reach out to AudStory. AudStory is a podcast production company based in Mumbai.
Happy International Podcast Day to all, let’s start podcasting!
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