History of podcasting

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Podcasting began to catch hold in late 2004. The ability to distribute audio and video files easily has been around since before the dawn of the Internet. Podcasting is different from other digital audio and video delivery in the use of syndication feed enclosures. This allows podcasts to be automatically downloaded to a user's media playback device.

[edit] Contents

  • 1 Precursor
  • 2 Timeline
  • 3 Popularization
  • 4 Coping with growth
  • 5 Notes and references


[edit] Precursor

Before the advent of the World Wide Web, in the 1980s, RCS (Radio Computing Services), provided music and talk-related software to radio stations in a digital format. Before online music digital distribution, the midi format as well as the Mbone, Multicast Network was used to distribute audio and video files. The MBone was a multicast network over the Internet used primarily by educational and research institutes, but there were audio talk programs.

Many other jukeboxes and websites in the mid 1990s provided a system for sorting and selecting music or audio files, talk, segue announcements of different digital formats. There were a few websites that provided audio subscription services.

The development of downloaded music did not reach a critical mass until the launch of Napster, another system of aggregating music, but without the subscription services provided by podcasting or video blogging aggregation client or system software. Independent of the development of podcasting via RSS, a portable player and music download system had been developed at Compaq Research as early as 1999 or 2000. Called PocketDJ, it would have been launched as a service for the Personal Jukebox or a successor, the first hard-disk based MP3-player.

A fully conceived precursor to podcasting came from another early MP3 player manufacturer. To supply content for its players the I2Go company, makers of the eGo player, introduced a digital news service called MyAudio2Go.com that created daily audio news feeds users could download to the eGo or any other MP3 player. The eGo's file transfer application could be programmed to pull down specific feeds to a user's PC every evening.

There were dozens of focused daily feeds covering national news, business news, entertainment news, even a recap of the previous day's TV shows. The service lasted over a year, but succumbed when the I2Go company ran out of capital during the dotcom crash and folded.

In 2001, Applian Technologies of San Francisco, CA introduced Replay Radio, a TiVo-like recorder for Internet Radio Shows. Besides scheduling and recording audio, one of the features was a Direct Download link, which would scan a radio publishers site for new files and copy them directly to a PC's hard disk. The first radio show to publish in this format was Web Talk Guys, produced by Rob and Dana Greenlee.

[edit] Timeline

To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup because it is in a list format that may be better presented using prose. You can help by converting this section to prose, if appropriate. Editing help is available. (April 2007)

  • October 2000 - The concept of using enclosures in RSS Feeds was proposed in October 2000 as a draft by Tristan Louis, and implemented in somewhat different form by Dave Winer, a software developer and an author of the RSS format. Winer had discussed the concept, also in October 2000, with Adam Curry, a user of his software, and had received other customer requests for audioblogging features. Winer included the new functionality in RSS 0.92, by defining a new element[5] called "enclosure", which would simply pass the address of a medi aggregator.
  • January 11, 2001 - Winer demonstrated the RSS enclosure feature by enclosing a Grateful Dead song in his Scripting News weblog..

For its first two years, the enclosure element had relatively few users and many developers simply avoided using it. Winer's company incorporated the new feature in its weblogging product, Radio Userland, the program favored by Curry, audioblogger Harold Gilchrist and others. Since Radio Userland had a built-in aggregator, it provided both the "send" and "receive" components of what was then called audioblogging. All that was needed for "podcasting" was a way to automatically move audio files from Radio Userland's download folder to an audio player (either software or hardware) -- along with enough compelling audio to make such automation worth the trouble.

  • June, 2003 - Stephen Downes demonstrated aggregation and syndication of audio files in his Ed Radio application. Ed Radio scanned RSS feeds for MP3 files, collected them into a single feed, and made the result available as SMIL or Webjay audio feeds.
  • September, 2003 - Winer created a special RSS-with-enclosures feed for his Harvard Berkman Center colleague Christopher Lydon's weblog, which previously had a text-only RSS feed. Lydon, a former New York Times reporter and NPR talkshow host, had posted 25 in-depth interviews with bloggers, futurists and political figures, which Winer gradually released to the feed. Announcing the feed in his weblog, Winer challenged other aggregator developers to support this new form of content and provide enclosure support. Not long after, Pete Prodoehl released a skin for the Amphetadesk aggregator that displayed enclosure links.
  • October 2003, Winer and friends organized the first Bloggercon weblogger conference at Berkman Center. CDs of Lydon's interviews were distributed as an example of the high-quality MP3 content enclosures could deliver; Bob Doyle demonstrated the portable studio he helped Lydon develop; Harold Gilchrist presented a history of audioblogging, including Curry's early role, and Kevin Marks demonstrated a script to download RSS enclosures and pass them to iTunes for transfer to an iPod. Curry and Marks discussed collaborating. After the conference, Curry offered his blog readers an RSS-to-iPod script (iPodder) that moved mp3 files from Userland Radio to iTunes, and encouraged other developers to build on the idea.
  • February 12, 2004 - The term "podcasting" was one of several terms for portable listening to audioblogs suggested by Ben Hammersley in The Guardian, referring to Lydon's interview programs ("...all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio. But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?").
  • September, 2004 - The iPodder idea was picked up by multiple developer groups. While many of the early efforts remained command-line based, the first podcasting client with a user interface was iPodderX (now called Transistr), developed by August Trometer and Ray Slakinski and released. Shortly thereafter, another group (iSpider) rebranded their software as iPodder and released it under that name as Free Software (under GPL). Since it was free-software this program was developed extensively and used quite a lot. The project was terminated after a cease and desist[19] letter from Apple (over iPodder trademark issues). It was reincarnated as Juice and CastPodder. The PodNova desktop client is also a derivative of iSpider. The PodNova desktop client is slightly modified so that it can keep the subscriptions on the server.[20]

At the same time, Dannie Gregoire used the term podcasting to describe the automatic download and synchronization of audio content; he also registered several 'podcast' related domains (e.g. podcast.net). The use of 'podcast' by Gregoire was picked up by podcasting evangelists such as Dave Slusher, Winer and Curry, and entered common usage.

Also in September, Adam Curry launched a mailing list, then Slashdot had a 100+ message discussion,[24] bringing even more attention to the ipodder developer projects in progress at SourceForge.

  • September 28, 2004 - Blogger and technology columnist Doc Searls began keeping track of how many "hits" Google found for the word "podcasts". On that day, the result was 24 hits.
  • September 28, 2004 - There were 526 hits on Google's search engine for the word "podcasts". Google Trends marks the beginning of searches for 'podcast' at the end of September.
  • October 1, 2004 - There were 2,750 hits on Google's search engine for the word "podcasts". This number continued to double every few days.
  • October 11, 2004 The first phonetic search engine for podcasting was launched called Podkey to assist podcasters to easily connect to each other. Capturing the early distribution and variety of podcasts was more difficult than counting Google hits, but before the end of October, The New York Times had reported podcasts across the United States and in Canada, Australia and Sweden, mentioning podcast topics from technology to veganism to movie reviews.[27] USA Today told its readers about the "free amateur chatfests" the following February, profiling several podcasters, giving instructions for sending and receiving podcasts, and including a "Top Ten" list from one of the many podcast directories that had sprung up.

Those Top Ten programs gave further indication of podcast topics: four were about technology (including Curry's Daily Source Code, which also included music and personal chat), three were about music, one about movies, one about politics, and—at the time number 1 on the list—The Dawn and Drew Show, described as "married-couple banter," a program format that USA Today noted was popular on American broadcast radio in the 1940s. After Dawn and Drew, such "couplecasts" became quite popular among independent podcasts, the most nobable being London couple Sowerby and Luff, whose talk show The Big Squeeze quickly achieved a global audience via the podcast Comedy 365.

  • October 18, 2004 - The number of hits on Google's search engine for the word "podcasts" surpassed 100,000. See September 28, 2005.
  • October, 2004 - Detailed how-to podcast articles[30] had begun to appear online, and a month later, Liberated Syndication (LibSyn) launched what was apparently the first Podcast Service Provider, offering storage, bandwidth, and RSS creation tools. "Podcasting" was first defined in Wikipedia.
  • November, 2004 - Podcasting networks started to appear on the scene with podcasters affiliating with one another. The first was the GodCast Network, followed by The Podcast Network, the Tech Podcasts Network which was later acquired by RawVoice, PodTech.net, the Association of Music Podcasting and others.
  • November, 2004 - The BBC became the first British broadcaster to offer podcasts, making BBC Radio 4's In Our Time available to download via RSS.
  • Early 2005 - The term "podmercial" was coined by John Iaisuilo, a radio broadcaster/podcaster in Las Vegas, who promptly trademarked it.
  • February, 2005 - Carl Franklin, publisher of the audio talk show .NET Rocks!, started the first official podcast production company, Pwop Productions, which now produces podcasts for Microsoft and other companies.

Also in February 2005, Australians Cameron Reilly and Mick Stanic started a Commercial Podcast Network, The Podcast network. Reilly described his vision for the network to be the Time Warner of New media.

Also on February 11, 2005, PRI's The World becomes one of the first public broadcasting daily news programs to podcast by launching the Technology podcast, hosted by Clark Boyd, which includes original material (not just repackaging of broadcast).

Also in February 2005, The Dave Ramsey Show becomes the first top-twenty commercial talk-radio program in the United States to podcast a radio show.

  • March, 2005 - John Edwards became the first national-level US politician to hold his own podcast. Within a few episodes, the show had all the features of a major podcast: a web site with subscription feeds and show notes, guest appearances, questions from the audience, reviews and discussion of books, musical interludes of podsafe (noninfringing) songs, light banter (sports and recreation talk), even limited soundseeing from on location.

Also, in March, Podcast Pickle went live on the net, and became the first Podcast Community on the Internet.

  • May, 2005 - The first book on podcasting was released, the award-winning Podcasting The Do it Yourself Guide, by Todd Cochrane founder of RawVoice

Also in May, John Furrier founded PodTech.net, a podcasting site focused on Silicon Valley and the pioneering InfoTalk format.

  • May 2005 - PodNova the first online webapplication with 'one-click' subscribing went live
  • May 2005 - The BBC expands its Download and Podcast Trial to offer 20 radio programmes as podcasts.
  • June, 2005, Apple staked its claim on the medium[citation needed] by adding podcasting to its iTunes 4.9 music software and building a directory of podcasts at its iTunes Music Store. The new iTunes could subscribe to, download and organize podcasts, which made a separate aggregator application unnecessary for many users. Apple also promoted creation of podcasts using its GarageBand and QuickTime Pro software and the MPEG 4, m4a audio format instead of mp3.

Also in June, the BBC's award-winning "Naked Scientists" programme became the first example of a BBC local radio programme to enter the podcast arena. The Naked Scientists has since gone on to become one of the most downloaded science podcasts internationally, returning a larger audience via podcast than the live aired programme.

  • July, 2005 - U.S. President George W. Bush became a podcaster of sorts, when the White House website added an RSS 2.0 feed to the previously downloadable files of the president's weekly radio addresses.

Also in July, the first People's Choice Podcast Awards were held during Podcast Expo. Awards were given in 20 categories. The term "poditorial" was coined by author John Hedtke in July while writing half of "Podcasting Now: Audio Your Way!"

  • September, 2005 The first podcast encoded in 5.1-channel encoded Dolby Headphone was created by Revision3 with their 14th episode of Diggnation. The Dolby encoding lasted for only a few minutes of the podcast.
  • September 28, 2005 - Exactly a year after first tracking hits for the word "podcasts" on Google's search engine, Google found more than 100,000,000 hits on the word "podcasts."
  • October 12, 2005 - Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPod with video capability. In his keynote speech he demonstrated the video podcasts Tiki Bar TV and Rocketboom.
  • November, 2005 - The UK's The Daily Telegraph newspaper is credited with being the first UK Newspaper to launch a regular podcast service.
  • November, 2005 - The first Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference was held at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California. The annual conference is now called the Podcast and New Media Expo.
  • November, 2005 - RawVoice founded by Todd Cochrane, Brian Yuhnke, Jeevan Padiyar, Angelo Mandato, and Barry Kantz launched the Podcaster News Network during the Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference. The network focuses on news and world events to include Sports, Business, Lifestyle, Politics, Religion, Health, and World and US National News.
  • November, 2005 - Podcasting Portal Podseek.net was launched. This Yahoo style podcasting directory, was the first to put the “search rankings” in the hands of members. Members rate, vote on, and write reviews of other Podcasts(ers) in the Directory.
  • December 3, 2005 Sony Computer Entertainment America announced that the PlayStation Portable would support podcasting using the RSS Channel feature after upgrading to 2.60.

"Podcast" was named the word of the year in 2005 by the New Oxford American Dictionary and would be in the dictionary in 2006.

  • February, 2006 - Following London radio station LBC's successful launch of the first premium-podcasting platform LBC Plus, there was widespread acceptance that podcasting had considerable commercial potential.

UK comedian Ricky Gervais launched a new series of his popular podcast The Ricky Gervais Show. The second series of the podcast was distributed through audible.co.uk and was the first major podcast to charge consumers to download the show at 95pence per half-hour episode. The first series of The Ricky Gervais Show podcast had been freely distributed by Positive Internet and marketed through The Guardian newspaper's website, and had become the world's most successful podcast to date with an average of 295,000 downloads per episode according to The Guinness Book of World Records. Even in its new subscription format, The Ricky Gervais Show is regularly the most-downloaded podcast on iTunes.

  • February 26, 2006 - The world's first live podcast theatrical entertainment event was held at The Rose Theatre, Ormskirk, West Lancashire in the UK. Entitled 'The Lance Anderson Podcast Experiment' it featured Lance Anderson of Verge of the Fringe, Dan Klass of The Bitterest Pill, Mark Hunter of tartanpodcast and Jon and Rob of Top of the Pods. Dan Klass appeared via a live video link to Los Angeles and the show was audio streamed live to a global audience.
  • March, 2006 - PodTech.net and founder John Furrier raised $5.5 million in venture capital for the second venture funded podcasting network startup. Investors of PodTech.net include Venrock Venrock Associates and USVP US Venture Partners.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper became the first head of government to issue a podcast, the "Prime Minister of Canada's Podcast".

  • July, 2006 - RawVoice launched Blubrry, the first podcast social networking community at Gnomedex 6.0.
  • September, 2006 - Pickle's Podcast Newswas introduced with podcasting news stories written by podcasters.
  • September, 2006 - The BFI 50th London Film Festival launched one of the UK's first DAILY VIDEO PODCASTS for the duration of the festival. These podcasts, from Get Learned Productions, were regularly in the iTunes chart, had over 20,000 direct downloads from the BFI website and defined event podcasting in the UK.
  • September, 2006 - The second annual Podcast and New Media Expo was held at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California.
  • October, 2006 - The first Podcast Peer Award winners were announced. This award is meant to provide recognition of industry excellence because the winners are chosen based on votes from other podcasters.
  • April 2007 - PodNova was completely redone in Web 2.0 style.
  • July 2007 - TechAndGames.com airs the longest podcast in history on the 18th episode. It lasts 13 hours and 34 minutes, but over 4 hours of the original episode that started the marathon is missing.
  • August 16, 2007 - The ENnie Awards, a prestigious set of awards in the Roleplaying Game industry, gives out their first award for Best Podcast. The Gold Award is won by Paul Tevis of Have Games, Will Travel with Yog Radio taking the Silver Award.
  • September, 2007 - The third annual Podcast and New Media Expo was held at the Ontario Convention Center in Ontario, California where it was announced that the expo would be moving to Las Vegas the following year and dropping the term "podcasting" from its name to reflect the diversity of new media.

Popularization

As is often the case with new technologies, pornography has become a part of the scene, producing what is sometimes called podnography. Other approaches include enlisting a class full of MBA students to research podcasting and compare possible business models, and venture capital flowing to influential content providers.

The growing popularity of podcasting introduced a demand for music available for use on the shows without significant cost or licensing difficulty. Out of this demand, a growing number of tracks, by independent as well as signed acts, are now being designated "podsafe". (See also Podcasting and Music Royalties.)

Podcasting has been given a major push by conventional media and can be read about further in podcasting by traditional broadcasters.

Podcasting has also been picked up by some print media, e.g. newspapers, who supply their readers with spoken versions of their content.

One of the first examples of a print publication to produce an audio podcast to supplement their printed content was the international scientific journal Nature. The Nature Podcast was set up in October 2005 by Cambridge University's award-winning "Naked Scientist", Chris Smith, who produces and presents the weekly show.

Although firm business models have yet to be established, podcasting represents a chance to bring additional revenue to a newspaper through advertising, subscription fees and licensing.

Coping with growth

While podcasting's innovators took advantage of the sound-file synchronization feature of Apple Inc.'s iPod and iTunes software -- and included "pod" in the name -- the technology was always compatible with other players and programs. Apple was not actively involved until mid-2005, when it joined the market on three fronts: as a source of "podcatcher" software, as publisher of a podcast directory, and as provider of tutorials on how to create podcasts with Apple products GarageBand and QuickTime Pro. Apple CEO Steve Jobs demonstrated creating a podcast during his January 10, 2006 keynote address to the Macworld Conference & Expo using new "podcast studio" features in GarageBand 3.

When it added a podcast-subscription feature to its June 28, 2005, release of iTunes 4.9,[38] Apple also launched a directory of podcasts at the iTunes Music Store, starting with 3,000 entries. Apple's software enabled AAC encoded podcasts to use chapters, bookmarks, external links, and synchronized images displayed on iPod screens or in the iTunes artwork viewer. Two days after release of the program, Apple reported one million podcast subscriptions.

Some podcasters found that exposure to iTunes' huge number of downloaders threatened to make great demands on their bandwidth and related expenses. Possible solutions were proposed, including the addition of a content delivery system, such as liberated syndication; Podcast Servers; Akamai; a peer-to-peer solution, BitTorrent; or use of free hosting services, such as those offered by Ourmedia, BlipMedia and the Internet Archive.

Since September 2005, a number of services began featuring video-based podcasting including Apple, via its iTunes Music Store, Participatory Culture Foundation and Loomia. Known by some as a vodcast, or vidcast, the services handle both audio and video feeds.

Since the release of Apple's 5th Generation iPod in October 2005, which incorporated playing video files, Video podcasting has become a major selling point for Apple.

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