16,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: DMS - Digital Media and Society
- Sprache: Englisch
Podcasting burst onto the media landscape in the early 2000s. At the time, there were hopes it might usher in a new wave of amateur and professional cultural production and represent an alternate model for how to produce, share, circulate, and experience new voices and perspectives. Twenty years later, podcasting is at a critical juncture in its relatively young history: a moment where the early ideals of open standards and platform-neutral distribution are giving way to services that prioritize lean-back listening and monetizable media experiences.
This book provides an accessible and comprehensive account of one of digital media’s most vibrant formats. Focusing on the historical changes shaping podcasts as a media format, the book explores the industrial, technological, and cultural components of podcasting alongside case studies of various podcasts, industry publications, and streaming audio platforms (e.g. Spotify, Google, and Apple Podcasts). Jeremy Wade Morris argues that as streaming platforms push to make podcasting more industrialized, accessible, user-friendly, and similar to other audio media like music or audiobooks, they threaten podcasting’s early, though always unrealized, promises.
This is the go-to introduction for students and researchers of media, communication, and cultural studies, as well as readers who enjoy making and listening to podcasts.
Sie lesen das E-Book in den Legimi-Apps auf:
Seitenzahl: 364
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
Ähnliche
Table of Contents
Cover
Series Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Podcasting’s Many Moments
Defining a Format
The Technologies of Podcasting
The Industry of Podcasting
The Sounds and People of Podcasting
The Platforms of Podcasting
Overview of the Book
1 The Promises of Podcasting’s Technologies
Podcasting since 2004 … !
Format History
Distribution Protocols
Digital (Audio) Files
Metadata
Production and Consumption Software
Format Losses and Gains
Conclusion
2 Mapping an Industry
Podcasting Grows Up
Formalization and Professionalization
Sketching the Industry
Podcast Producers
Distributors
Advertisers
Content Creation Tools
Infomediaries
Critics
Awards
Conferences
Audiences
Conclusion
3 Making Podcasting Pay
What’s the Problem with Free?
The Economics of Podcasting
Advertising
Subscriptions
Crowdfunding
The Fuzzy Economics of Podcasting
Archives and Back Catalogues
Crowdfunded Support and Podcaster Agency
Conclusion
4 Speaking Sonically
Listening In
That’s So Aesthetic
Formal Aesthetics
Format Aesthetics
Socio-Technical Aesthetics
Social and Political Aesthetics
Conclusion
5 Podcasting’s Platforms
Understanding Platforms and Platformization
The Challenges of Platformizing Podcasts
Exclusives: The Netflix of Podcasting
Global IP for Local Markets
The Concealment of RSS
Datafication
Algorithmic Discovery
Creator Tools: The TikTok of Podcasting
Conclusion
Conclusion: Podcasting’s Final Moments?
Original but Not Exclusive
Podcasting and AI
Podcasting as Audio Content
Podcast Playlist
References
Index
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Pages
ii
iii
iv
v
vi
viii
ix
x
xi
xii
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
Series Title
Digital Media and Society Series
Nancy Baym,
Personal Connections in the Digital Age
, 2nd edition
Taina Bucher,
Mercedes Bunz and Graham Meikle,
The Internet of Things
Jean Burgess and Joshua Green,
YouTube
, 2nd edition
Mark Deuze,
Media Work
Andrew Dubber,
Radio in the Digital Age
Quinn DuPont,
Cryptocurrencies and Blockchains
Charles Ess,
Digital Media Ethics
, 3rd edition
Terry Flew,
Regulating Platforms
Jordan Frith,
Smartphones as Locative Media
Gerard Goggin,
Apps: From Mobile Phones to Digital Lives
Alexander Halavais,
Search Engine Society
, 2nd edition
Martin Hand,
Ubiquitous Photography
Robert Hassan,
The Information Society
Kylie Jarrett,
Digital Labor
Amelia Johns, Ariadna Matamoros-Fernández, and Emma Baulch,
WhatsApp: From a One-to-One Messaging App to a Global Communication Platform
Tim Jordan,
Hacking
D. Bondy Valdovinos Kaye, Jing Zeng, and Patrik Wikström,
TikTok: Creativity and Culture in Short Video
Graeme Kirkpatrick,
Computer Games and the Social Imaginary
Tama Leaver, Tim Highfield and Crystal Abidin,
Leah A. Lievrouw,
Alternative and Activist New Media
, 2nd edition
Rich Ling and Jonathan Donner,
Mobile Communication
Donald Matheson and Stuart Allan,
Digital War Reporting
Nick Monaco and Samuel Woolley,
Bots
Jeremy Wade Morris,
Podcasting
Dhiraj Murthy,
, 2nd edition
Zizi A. Papacharissi,
A Private Sphere: Democracy in a Digital Age
Julian Thomas, Rowan Wilken and Ellie Rennie,
Wi-Fi
Katrin Tiidenberg, Natalie Ann Hendry, and Crystal Abidin,
tumblr
Jill Walker Rettberg,
Blogging
, 2nd edition
Patrik Wikström,
The Music Industry
, 3rd edition
Podcasting
Jeremy Wade Morris
polity
Copyright Page
Copyright © Jeremy Wade Morris 2024
The right of Jeremy Wade Morris to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2024 by Polity Press
Polity Press
65 Bridge Street
Cambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press
111 River Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5733-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5734-9 (pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023948412
by Fakenham Prepress Solutions, Fakenham, Norfolk NR21 8NL
The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.
Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com
Dedication
For Mom and Dad, for teaching me to “look it up.”
Acknowledgments
I fell in love with podcasts around the same time as I started making them. I can barely remember the names of the first shows I listened to, though they were probably about music or relationships or technology and culture. But I vividly remember the feeling of listening to new voices, ideas, and perspectives I wasn’t hearing elsewhere. I remember laughing out loud, thinking quietly, falling in love with new songs, and almost crying openly on public transportation as I listened to a heartbreaking story in my headphones and wondered what strangers around me were thinking. This book is a thank you to all the podcasters who surfaced those feelings, who do the tireless and often thankless and unrecognized work of producing new shows day after day or week after week for their listeners. Their work inspires me to listen more curiously. They set me off on an exciting path of researching, writing, and teaching about podcasting; a path that continues to bring me as much joy today as those first podcasts did in 2005.
I started making podcasts as a distraction from my work in graduate school. It was something to focus on that was related to my dissertation but that wasn’t my dissertation. The Midnight Poutine Podcast was not a particularly popular or groundbreaking podcast, but, like poutine, those who liked it liked it a lot. It was also an incredible learning experience since producing the weekly music recommendation podcast taught me valuable technical skills about this emerging format and about the importance of local communities and scenes as I met talented artists, musicians, producers, concert promoters, record labels, and fellow podcasters who all cared deeply about music and sound in Montreal. Thanks to all the people I met and worked with at Midnight Poutine and to the few thousand listeners we managed to reach.
I want to thank my PhD supervisor, Jonathan Sterne, for helping me publish my first journal article on podcasting, which we co-authored with colleagues I haven’t seen for far too long (hi, Mike and Ariana!). Jonathan once told me that his mentorship and advice wouldn’t end once I received my PhD but would continue indefinitely. He’s stayed more than true to his words. I’ll stay true to mine and continue to thank him at every chance I get.
In my current role, I am thankful to work every day with colleagues whom I consider my closest friends and office buddies. Countless thanks to Eric Hoyt for movie nights, music shows, and for past (and hopefully future) collaborations on how to best preserve podcasts and other media. Innumerable thanks to Jonathan Gray for unending wisdom, mentorship, and a true appreciation for ketchup chips that only Canadians in a mostly US workplace can share. Infinite thanks to Jason Lopez for making work less like work and more like fun, for birdie dances, and for rethinking your overly strict infinity bottle policies. Incalculable thanks to Lori Lopez for the many lunches, vent conversations, and end-of-semester celebrations, as well as for keeping the dream of the spalogcast alive. Immeasurable thanks to Derek Johnson for hundreds, if not thousands, of miles of support, advice, and listening. There’s no one I’d rather be on long hilly roads with.
Beyond my immediate area colleagues, the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin–Madison is full of smart and dedicated colleagues; I consider myself lucky to be a part of such an impressive group of scholars. I am also proud to work in a department that consistently brings in such talented and surprising graduate students. Thank you for all you’ve taught me and for keeping me on my toes. Special thanks are owed to Ben Pettis, who read and provided feedback on a draft of this manuscript, and to my current and former advisees, whose ideas and projects remind me what a privilege it is to be in this line of work. Further afield, I owe many thanks to the many podcast, radio, sound, and music scholars whose work this book tries desperately to do justice to. I see them at conferences and they are too many to name, though hopefully I’ve cited most of them here.
This book would not have been possible without the diligent, supportive, and timely work of my editor, Mary Savigar. Thank you for always being available to talk through difficulties I was facing and for being patient as I lobbed questions about revisions and sent through improperly formatted files! You had a clear vision for this project from the first time we discussed it, and I was honored to be asked to participate in a series with so many authors I look up to and draw inspiration from. Thanks also to Stephanie Homer for her great recommendations, design suggestions, and general production assistance, to Justin Dyer for eagle eyes on the copy-edits, and to all the other folks at Polity whom I didn’t correspond with but who I know helped get this book out in the world. Thanks also to Pilar Wyman for indexing the project. I also want to recognize that this book got finished close to on time because of the time and resources afforded to me by a Fall Competition Grant from the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Graduate Research and Education and from the NEH Summer Stipend Program (with special thanks to Jonathan Sterne and Michele Hilmes for kindly writing in support of the project).
Finally, I want to thank my family. My parents, John and Claire, have been a constant source of support, strength, and inspiration throughout my life, teaching me the importance of public speaking, a love of writing, and thoughtful listening from an early age. I know you still claim you don’t know what a podcast is (even though you’ve both listened to several and Mom’s actually been a guest on one), but this 64,000-word definition of podcasting, while maybe not what you were looking for, will hopefully get you closer to the answer. Thanks also to my brother, Regan, my sister-in-law, Elizabeth, and my wonderful nephews, Thomas, Henry, and George. We don’t see you nearly enough, but we are thankful whenever we do. Reeg and Liz, I know that you’re avid before-bed podcast listeners, so hopefully this book offers you a few extra listening suggestions (and doesn’t make you fall asleep faster than your current podcasts do!). Thanks also to the most supportive in-laws anyone could ask for, Peter and Carol. You and the 4 P’s have always made me feel welcome when I’m away from home, and your encouragement of my work, even when I should be vacationing, speaks volumes.
I don’t get to make podcasts as often as I used to anymore. But I am grateful that the last big podcast I worked on was a project with my favorite podcasters, Lucas, Josh, and Rachel. They helped me create over a dozen podcasts for my podcasting class during the pandemic, and I still listen to the episodes to this day, amazed at my kids’ insights about what it means to have a voice, to listen openly and curiously, and to speak out for what you believe in. You have all upended my life in ways I never thought possible but am forever grateful for. You make me rethink what I think I know. Thanks for putting up with the dad jokes and the talky-talky bits and for helping me grow as a father and person.
Finally, to my favorite person in the world, Leanne Morris, who continues to surprise and amaze me with every passing day. She got to hear more of the ups and downs of writing this book and see more of my late nights and early mornings than anyone. Thank you for the dog walks and long conversations that help me get my mind out of my work. We make annual road trips back home to see our families each summer, and the trips usually involve long drives and a lot of time to pass. I’m thankful for the times we put on Heavyweight, or How to Be a Girl, and try to stop ourselves from laughing too loud or crying too hard since our kids are in the backseat and we really should be focusing on the road. Here’s to being taken away by a story and looking over at you and knowing you feel the exact same way.
IntroductionPodcasting’s Many Moments
As I was researching statistics on the popularity of podcasts for this book, a headline from the satirical US news-parody site The Onion caught my attention: “250 Million Americans Still Need Guests on Their Podcasts This Week.” The faux-news article describes the trials and tribulations of local resident Robert Healy, host of a podcast he called The TV Robcast, who, along with a quarter of a billion other Americans, could not “secure a guest with whom to engage in 45 minutes of inane banter about politics, food, stand-up comedy, or rock music.” According to the report, podcast guests all over the country had “either just appeared on last week’s episode or [were] too busy hosting their own shows.” The article noted the crisis was one of podcasters’ own making, since, unfortunately, “no podcasters will consider simply not releasing an episode this week, as not one of them wants to risk losing any of the 14 listeners they have been steadily cultivating for the past year and a half” (The Onion 2013).
The Onion published this take on podcasting in 2013, and since the outlet takes its cues from pop culture, it’s safe to assume that in 2013, podcasting was having a moment. Like any good piece of satire, we can see in the article some of the then-common perceptions (and realities) about podcasting in between the one-liners. Podcasts, in 2013, were media that anyone could make; in this case, so many people were making them that there was no one left to be featured in them. The Onion also pokes fun at the mundane topics of discussion podcasts usually featured for their niche audiences. Keenly, though perhaps unintentionally, The Onion also identified deeper issues that were becoming apparent in podcasting in 2013. They rightly note the amount of work and affective labor it takes for podcasters to cultivate an audience (even one of just 14 listeners), and the accompanying photo of a white man with a USB microphone pointed at an empty chair in an apparently middle-class kitchen, and the frequent references to American podcasters and listeners, also highlights the gender, racial, class, and regional inequities that structured podcast production and representations of podcasting in the popular press at the time. The very existence of the article at all suggests that podcasts were certainly well enough known in 2013 that The Onion could assume readers would find this worthy of a laugh.
If podcasting wasn’t known by 2013, it certainly drew considerable mainstream attention in several major markets the very next year thanks to breakout global hits like Serial, the US-based true crime podcast sensation, or My Dad Wrote a Porno, the UK-based show where host Jamie Morton and friends read chapters of an amateur erotic novel written by Morton’s father. These shows garnered millions of downloads during their initial runs and highlighted podcasting’s possibilities as a potentially profitable media industry. Companies rushed to invest in the format, seeking to capitalize on the “golden age” of podcasting (Blattberg 2014; Roose 2014; Sillesen 2014). While The Onion joked about reaching peak podcast in 2013, the deluge of podcasts that followed in 2014 made 2013 pale in comparison.
The year 2013 is also just shy of 10 years after the term “podcasting” first appeared in print, in an article from The Guardian (Hammersley 2004). The early 2000s, then, might be described as podcasting’s first “moment”; one where podcasting was a new and exciting format that was on the verge of disrupting entire industries. Accessible and relatively open technologies like Really Simple Syndication (RSS – see also chapter 1 for further discussion) and MP3 files helped users feel greater agency over how, when, and where they consumed audio. Journalistic sources at the time played up the “new-versus-old dichotomy” between podcasting and traditional radio broadcasting, “explicitly linking the technology’s supposed revolutionary qualities to its internet-based distribution” (Sterne et al. 2008). In this moment, podcasting was to be both the “end of radio” (Newitz 2005) and the “future of radio” (Chideya 2005); it was simultaneously a highly democratic and anti-corporate format that let any user have their say while also providing an effective new tool for corporations, brands, and other institutions to reach consumers (Crofts et al. 2005).
As I write this in 2023 – 10 years after the Onion article and about 20 years after the term first emerged – podcasting seems to be experiencing yet another moment. After two decades of steady growth in content, listeners, and industrial infrastructure, podcasting is now almost as ubiquitous as early commentators claimed it might be. Spotify – the Sweden-based music streaming service provider – has been heavily investing in podcasting, and many major private and public media platforms around the world (Google, NPR, PRX, Apple, Amazon, Tencent, Ximalaya, ABC, BBC, CBC, etc.) have incorporated podcasts into their services. Most major brands, broadcasters, and celebrities have their own podcasting strategies, and an entire ecosystem of award shows, industry newsletters, advertising networks, subscription models, apps, and technologies exists to support what is no longer an emerging media format, but an everyday form of media consumption.
Through these past two decades, then, podcasting has had many moments. It’s a media format that’s perennially on the verge of taking off for great heights but seems to relish remaining at a modest cruising altitude. Underneath all the waxing and waning of interest and investment in podcasting over the last 20 years lies a media format that has grown steadily, but not dramatically; never quite spiking in popularity as prognosticators predicted, but also never quite fading away as skeptics surmised. Podcasting’s growth has been relatively consistent, and while individual shows may gain rapid popularity and disappear just as quickly, hundreds of thousands of shows plod along with modest audiences. Each year, statistics on podcast listenership seem to tick a few percentage points higher.
For example, in 2023, Edison Research’s Infinite Dial Study noted that 42% of Americans aged 12+ had listened to a podcast in the last month, the highest percentage ever recorded and up 4% from the prior year. A majority of Americans between aged 12 and 54 (53%) had listened to a podcast in the last month, and 39% had listened in the last week (Edison Research 2023). The United States had led the world in podcast listenership, but recent surveys in countries like Australia suggest other regions are growing as well: 43% of Australians had listened in the last month and they also edged out US listeners in weekly listening (PodNews 2023b). There is a high, or rapidly growing, listenership in a number of other countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Ghana, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden (Acast 2023a; Cramer-Flood 2022). Estimates for global podcast listenership hover around 400 million, with estimates projecting over 500 million listeners by 2024 (Webster 2022). According to the Podcast Index, which tracks open podcast feeds on the web, there are nearly 4.1 million podcasts in existence. Spotify claims to host 5 million via its platform and serves over 100 million podcast listeners. Video podcasts make up a fraction of that, but they are also growing rapidly. In 2022, the Podcast Index tracked just under 40,000 video podcasts; eight months later, that number was over 50,000 (PodNews 2022a). Podcasting is projected to be a multi-billion dollar a year industry by 2024 (A. Shapiro 2022).
I’ll refrain from making yet more predictions about whether the 2020s is when podcasting is really, truly, no-seriously-this-time, going to take off. Despite significant recent investments, podcasting is likely to continue to grow steadily rather than suddenly. Podcast saturation is such now that it’s becoming more and more of a typical part of the media landscape, along with television, radio, and social media; not so much the newest format on the block as a relatively mundane media experience that some audiences engage with heavily while others encounter it casually and sporadically. Podcasts are simply part of everyday media consumption for many listeners, integrated into their Spotify, YouTube, car audio platforms, smart speakers, and more.
Just because podcasting has had many moments, though, and some of those moments have not always lived up to the hype that accompanied them, this doesn’t erase the fact that podcasting has ushered in an explosion of amateur and professional cultural production and represents an alternate model for how new voices and perspectives can be produced, shared, distributed, and experienced. Podcasting has, since its earliest days, been perched precariously between being a disruptive format with the potential to expand amateur access to media production and distribution and an industrially valuable format with proprietary technologies, exclusive content, and closed platforms that replicate media industry norms. Despite, or perhaps because of, this balancing act, the users, content producers, and industrial actors involved in podcasting have managed to forge a distinct format for cultural, artistic, and social expression. Podcasting fosters and builds relationships between and among its audiences and hosts, offering users a chance to connect to an imagined sense of community and public life. Podcasting’s abundance offers access to perspectives, topics, and ideas that may not be found in older formats of radio and the media ecosystem more generally. The format has ushered in a variety of sonic styles, genres, shows, and perspectives, and has breathed new life into radio and other media.
The reason to focus on podcasting’s various moments, then, is to reflect on how these moments have shaped the current one, and the future that might unfold for podcasting as a result. By exploring the industrial, technological, economic, cultural, and sonic shifts that have taken place in podcasting since the early 2000s, and by analyzing particular podcasts, platforms, and industry developments, the book’s main argument is that the current moment is a critical juncture in the format’s relatively young history, one that will ultimately shape the ways users know and understand it. We are, after all, in a moment where the early ideals of open standards, platform-neutral distribution, broad access rights, and the distinctiveness of podcasting as a media experience are giving way to new models that prioritize lean-back listening, monetizable media services, platform dependence, and treating podcasts as just another piece of audio content. Paradoxically, as podcasting services push to make the format more accessible, more user-friendly, and more like other media experiences, they threaten core aspects of the very format they hope to popularize. We are in a moment, I argue, where the very definition of what a podcast is – what makes podcasts different from, say, radio, blogging, video, online news, etc. – is again up for contestation, and the enterprises, individuals, and entities looking to put their stamp on that definition risk putting their own interests ahead of the good of the format.
Defining a Format
The above introduction assumes that readers know what a podcast is, and that the term means the same thing now as it did around 20 years ago when it first emerged. Defining precisely what is and what is not a podcast, though, has never been an easy task. Richard Berry, in one of the earliest academic articles on podcasting, argued that “‘Podcasting’ allows anyone with a PC to create a ‘radio’ programme and distribute it freely, through the internet to the portable MP3 players of subscribers around the world.” It has created a space where “the technology we already have assumes new roles and where audiences, cut off from traditional media, rediscover their voices” (Berry 2006: 143). Early definitions were often mostly technical, noting that it allowed for “audio files that would have been previously downloaded and played on a personal computer to be automatically downloaded and listened to on portable music playing devices (such as the iPod and other MP3 players)” (Crofts et al. 2005), and focusing on the five steps involved in making a podcast: creating the content, publishing it online, getting listeners to subscribe, downloading it, and then, finally, playing it.
Steve Jobs, at an Apple event in 2005 where he not so slyly took credit for a practice that had flourished for years without Apple’s help, defined podcasting as a “concatenation of iPod and broadcasting.” Podcasts were: “TiVo for radio […] you can download radio shows and listen to ’em on your computer or put ’em on your iPod anytime you want, so it’s just like television programs on TiVo.” Jobs also noted anyone could do it by likening it to “Wayne’s World for radio,” a reference to the Saturday Night Live sketches (and subsequent movies) of two amateur boys broadcasting their every thought from their mom’s basement. Podcasting allowed “anyone, without much capital investment, [to] make a podcast, put it on a server and get a worldwide audience for their radio show.” After noting there were already 8,000 podcasts out there, from amateurs and big-name companies, Jobs called it the “hottest thing in radio” (Jobs 2005).
The New Oxford English Dictionary, which chose podcasting as the word of the year in 2005, defined it, mostly in technical terms, as “a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player” (Wired 2005). Wikipedia’s definition is even more concise but also vague enough to be just about anything: “A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet” (Wikipedia 2023).
Ben Hammersley’s article for The Guardian, which most sources point to as the first time the word entered the mainstream lexicon, doesn’t really define podcasting beyond calling it online radio, or a form of audioblogging. He notes that podcasting combines “the intimacy of voice, the interactivity of a weblog, and the convenience and portability of an MP3 download,” and argues that podcasts represent a “different kind of radio,” a challenge to the status quo of the media industries that “liberates” program-makers to create the kind of content they want to create, free from the regulations of traditional broadcasting. Podcasting also gives listeners freedom to choose exactly when and where they can listen to what they want. Media-making and the ability to share your voice far and wide are “no longer the preserve of the professional, or the rich” (Hammersley 2004). The technical source of this “freedom,” as noted in most of these definitions, was the then-novel standard of RSS, and its role in allowing consumers to “subscribe” and select podcasts they wanted to download to their devices. This is what helped make podcasts “on demand” and what distinguished them from terrestrial radio at the time.
My colleagues and I also made an early attempt at defining podcasting back in 2008, though we pushed back on whether such a “vexed term” could, or even should, be defined:
A colloquial hybrid of “broadcasting” and Apple’s trademarked “iPod”, it contains a reference to a well-known and heavily branded product, while simultaneously conjuring notions of personal freedom and escape from the vice-grip of commercial broadcasting. For cyber-mavens, hobbyists, and not-for-profit organisations, podcasts embody a new, more democratic kind of expression. For media companies and other corporations, they represent a new way to connect to niche audiences and another potential revenue stream. (Sterne et al. 2008)
The definition of podcasts, we argued, depends on who’s defining it. We also noted that podcasts (as in the technical objects that circulate via the internet to our devices) couldn’t be defined without also defining podcasting (as in the cultural practice of making, listening to, and circulating podcasts). Podcasts aren’t just nouns but also verbs; they are practices in which media-making and media-consuming publics engage. Podcasting was part of a longer history of broadcasting, but also owed debts to blogging, affordable digital audio editing software, and accessible recording hardware. It was less a technical format and more a cultural practice that could hopefully “turn our attention back out to questions regarding who has the right to communicate, to what extent and by what means” (Sterne et al. 2008).
As podcasting gained popularity through the late 2000s and the 2010s, the format’s definition expanded. Nele Heise, drawing on Kris Markman and Caroline Sawyer (2014), notes that, “technically, podcasting is a method for delivering audio – and/or video – files via so-called RSS feeds for download and later playback on various devices,” but also recognizes that podcasting has manifold meanings: it is also user-generated content, audio on demand, a new distribution architecture, personal and intimate media, and a new form of storytelling (Heise 2014: 1–2). Andrew Bottomley nods to the technical specifications of the format, and the importance of “time-shifting,” but reminds readers that podcasting has always been “more than a method of audio distribution” (2015: 166). As podcasts grew and drew inspiration from other media content and media industries, defining them became even more difficult a decade into their existence: “These convergences between podcasting and radio (not to mention film and television, music, theater, literature, etc.) make identifying a podcasting ‘sound’ or ‘style,’ or even a distinct podcasting audience or industry, exceedingly difficult” (Bottomley 2015: 167). Of course, the technical differences that podcasts offer still matter (Hansen 2021), but most current definitions of podcasts also focus on the “modes of production, presentation, audience engagement and intention [of producers and listeners]” (Llinares et al. 2018: 5) to highlight how podcasts create their distinctive “sound aesthetic where traditional rules around language, content, duration and structural conventions are bent, if not completely broken” (Llinares et al. 2018: 4).
As the technology behind podcasting has changed and as the industry around podcasting has evolved, newer definitions continue to emphasize the need to combine technical definitions with considerations of production, consumption, and distribution as well. Tiziano Bonini sees podcasting “as a cultural practice of producing and consuming digital sound content” (2015: 22). It is both radio remediated and a distinct format unto itself (Bonini 2022). Martin Spinelli and Lance Dann similarly encourage us to think beyond podcasts as simply radio reformatted by highlighting podcasting’s distinctive character: “a podcast is more than mere audio text, it is a relationship invited through an audio text between people involved in making and listening to that text and beyond” (2019: 13). They list 11 characteristics that describe how a podcast creates this relationship, including: its primary consumption through headphones; its status as a mostly mobile medium; its ability to garner global audiences; its ability to offer listeners control over the listening experience; its additional interactivity with audiences via social media; its lack of dependence on traditional gatekeepers or broadcast schedules; and its freemium model (an economic model that blends a free initial service or product with premium, monetized offerings for additional services or products). Emphasizing the need to move beyond thinking of podcasts as tied to any one specific technology, like RSS or MP3 files, Jemily Rime and colleagues define podcasts as existing within a set of tensions between personalization and automation, independent and mainstream production, unique and universal content, current audience and possible demographic, immersion and interactivity, and art and technology (2022: 1262). Considering podcasting’s seriality, immersion, and the global nature of the format, they argue that “a podcast is a piece of episodical, downloadable or streamable, primarily spoken audio content, distributed via the internet, playable anywhere, at any time, produced by anyone who so wishes,” though they qualify this by noting that because podcasts are also always innovating and changing, so must our definitions of the format (Rime et al. 2022: 1270). This seems especially true as YouTube becomes a central distribution hub for podcasters, and more and more “listeners” become accustomed to watching their podcasts by video.
These are just a few of the many definitions of podcasting that have surfaced over the years, but the vexing problem of defining it becomes even more difficult when we factor in the regional and cultural contexts in which it emerges. China, for example, had a few early podcasts in the mid-2000s but the format did not really take off until early in the 2010s. When it did, podcasting was introduced as part of a larger audio content experience offered through platforms like Ximalaya and was less tied to some of the US-based technologies, ideas, and uses that helped define the format for Western audiences (Yi, quoted in Quah 2019b). France’s history with the meanings and definition of podcast is another example, since the word “podcasteurs” and the idea of podcasts, at least until around 2010, referred more to short vlog-style comedy videos posted to YouTube rather than RSS-enabled audio (Rime et al. 2022: 1273).
The biggest change to how we understand podcasting has come in the last five years, as we’ve witnessed the platformization of podcasting (Sullivan 2019). While Apple has long provided important infrastructure for distributing podcasts and technologies for consuming them, the inclusion of podcasts on Spotify, Amazon, Google, Ximalaya, and other global platforms has resulted in significant investments that are shaping content production, distribution technologies, advertising logics, economic models, and more. Platform-based distribution of podcasts may not necessarily change the fundamental ways that the content of podcasts connects with audiences, but it has certainly shifted how we think about who makes podcasts, how podcasts get discovered, and who their intended audience is. While there’s a sense at the present moment that podcasting retains “the ethos of an amateur medium, despite […] more recent commercial developments” (Berry 2020: 67), it’s also fair to worry, as Berry does, that the move to platforms and an “app-led ecosystem […] represents a move away from the […] environment described in early articles on podcasting” (2020: 67).
In other words, podcasts – and the ways we’ve defined them – have changed significantly since a journalist in 2004 inadvertently gave us the term that now describes a vast, vibrant, and increasingly industrialized format. Podcasting was born in an era when using RSS feed reader software wasn’t unusual, and free amateur chat-casts were a dime a dozen. Today, podcasters, amateur and professional alike, barely need to know what RSS is and they can make (and make money from) podcasts that cover myriad genres, from audio fiction to investigative journalism to sonic art. As podcast platforms introduce new features, like exclusive content, paid subscriptions, video accompaniment, AI-voiced shows, and more, they call into question what we thought we knew about format. As new technologies surface, they bring additional features and functions to how podcasts circulate and work, giving new meaning to what it means to listen to a podcast. What we called a podcast in 2004 and what we call a podcast now are different, even if both are recognizable as podcasts: “our preferences, our colloquialisms and our culture give the word ‘podcasting’ its meaning” (Rime et al. 2022: 1273). This is partly why Dario Llinares argues that podcasting is a medium rather than a format; it’s “a concert of technologies activated through a specific configuration of practices (audio production, systems managements, listening consumption, marketing and sharing), the outcome of which is a socio-cultural-aesthetic phenomenon that communicates information and organizes experience” (2022: 415). It’s also why Berry, almost 15 years after his original article, argues that “the tensions between the political, technical, economic and cultural means of defining ‘podcasting’ are live debates that have yet to be settled” (2020: 68).
For the purposes of this book, and building on all of the above, I define podcasting as a novel combination of technologies, economic investments, industrial decisions, aesthetic experiments, and audience/producer relationships around audio-focused content delivered globally via digital means. Podcasting remediates other media forms (radio, television, music, blogging, etc.), but in its combination of these previous forms, it creates novel sounds, media experiences, and relationships between listeners, audio producers, and the sonic worlds around them. This book is structured around this definition, and explores the shifts that have taken, and are taking, place in the technologies, industries, economics, aesthetics, and platforms of podcasting. Doing so also reveals how these shifts contribute to new understandings of what a podcast is, and can be, and how this particular moment podcasting now faces is a critical juncture in its history.
The Technologies of Podcasting
Almost all the definitions of podcasting mentioned in the previous section make note of specific technologies that position podcasting as a distinct media format. Any understanding of podcasting is intimately linked to the technologies involved in making, distributing, and consuming podcasts. One of the benefits of thinking about podcasting in this way is that, while podcasting’s specific technologies may change over time, it is nevertheless understood as a distinct media format because of the particular assemblage of technologies it brings together. While the specific standards, protocols, or formats may change, podcasting’s technical aspects generally involve the following key technologies:
(1) Audio production software/hardware. Before a podcast can exist, a podcaster needs a number of technologies to create it. This includes a huge range of consumer and professional hardware and software for recording, editing, and processing digital audio, ranging from free programs like GarageBand and Audacity to more intensive and (sometimes) expensive digital audio workstations (DAWs) like Adobe Audition or Hindenburg. Regardless of whether they are recorded cheaply on portable recorders, phones, or affordable USB microphones or in extremely expensive studios, podcasts depend on the ability to capture and record sound, which can then be edited or exported into an audio file for download or streaming.
(2) Audio(-informed) content. The output from the production process is content that can be shared, uploaded, downloaded, or (live)streamed to audiences. This is primarily an audio file, though various points in podcasting’s history have seen a rise in the prominence of “video podcasts,” whether through the video iPod in the mid-2000s or the more recent popularity of YouTube as a hub for podcast distribution. There has also been a rise in “live” podcast shows in theaters, and many podcasts make use of the web’s visual capabilities to share complementary materials. Even in these more visual experiences, however, audio typically plays a central role – though there is an entire category of Deaf podcasts for which the role and use of audio are completely subverted. In podcasting’s earliest days, podcasts were typically audio-only, in the MP3 format, a relatively open format that was widely available for commercial and public use (see Sterne 2012 for why it’s “relatively” open). Other file formats have emerged over the years (e.g., AAC, Ogg Vorbis, WAV, etc.) and video podcasts and live performances come with their own technical conditions as well (.mp4, .mov, .wmv, a stage, a theater, etc.). Today, most podcast providers rely primarily on streaming, so the exact format in which podcasts arrive is much less known to consumers and is increasingly just understood as online audio. What unites all these varying formats is their ability to support the articulation of experience.
(3) Metadata information. As with many digital files, one of the key elements that defines a podcast as a podcast is metadata. This information about the information in podcasts is essential to how podcasts appear to users in the various software and devices they use to consume podcasts. Metadata allows each podcast to have a series of attributes – title, host, genre, length, description, date published, language, etc. – that can then be displayed in the software/hardware the listener uses. Although podcast metadata was elementary in its early stages, there are now a huge array of metadata categories. They are typically XML files that lay out a series of conditions or parameters for describing a podcast in a way that will become legible to the various distribution platforms and apps on which the podcast will eventually reside.
(4) Distribution protocols.
