Podcasting is here to stay

It never ceases to amaze me, how resilient people can be, when a good idea comes along. Podcasting is a good idea -- ask anyone who's had an interest in doing radio or just getting their voice/music/ideas out there. For years and years (sometimes decades), audiophiles have been at the mercy of the "audio establishment" -- radio and music industries -- forced to take whatever they had to offer, and not standing much of a chance of breaking into the game without substantial financial backing, a lot of good connections, or being willing to sacrifice what they value most (their independence, their autonomy, their copyright, or their virginity). Those of us with things to say -- out loud -- have been waiting around for an awful long time, looking for opportunities precisely like podcasting. Now that it's here, we're not about to quit. We may alter our strategies and have to really work at keeping a production schedule going, but we're in it for the long haul. Everyone out there who was producing their own "radio" on their dad's portable cassette recorder when they were seven years old, pining for the day when they could do it for real knows what I'm talking about.

I think perhaps one of the reasons that print journalists have been so eager to dismiss podcasting, is that they just don't have the passion for it. They're print people -- written word people -- and the idea of recording your voice, week after week, and putting it out there to a faceless universe just doesn't appeal to them. They spent their early years with pen in hand, huddled over a spiral bound notebook, nose-deep in a novel. I should know -- I was, too!

On the other hand, you have people (also like me -- I've been a Renaissance Gal for four decades, now!) who are very audio-oriented and who have been radioheads since the advent of FM radio and who have waited with bated breath for this medium to emerge. I remember how I used to sit by the old radio in my Mom's kitchen, portable cassette recorder in hand, a half-used tape queued up to the first empty space, waiting for the announcer to be done talking, so I could record the next set of music. The RIAA might say it was illegal, my little experiments in audio recording, but it was for personal consumption, and I made no money off it, so I believe it counts as 'fair use'.

It was really only a matter of time, till podcasting happened, given that broadband is on the rise... and the fact that computer programming uses the same parts of the human brain as composing and playing music... and a lot of the folks who have been at the forefront of computing have been artists and musicians who have been seeking (sometimes desperately) a way to get their work out there. These folks have been working with computers -- some of them for a long time -- in part because it does use that part of their brains that's been so woefully deprived by being shunted to the margins of the creative audio world. But now, suddenly, there's another outlet. We're not afraid of the technology, we're not afraid of the cutting edge, and a lot of us have the expertise and the mindset that lets us cut to the chance very quickly with mastering this new medium -- probably faster than any other that's emerged in recent history.

Never underestimate the power of cumulative frustration

I think one of the big reasons the world wide web took off as much as it did, was that it gave a lot of frustrated, editorially challenged writers (challenged by power-hungry, exclusionary editors, not challenged in their own abilities to write) who found an outlet for their talents... and ran with it.

Same thing with artists -- tho' visual artists are in this in-between place, where they often more system resources than writers to communicate their ideas, and they need more bandwidth to handle their graphical renderings that's not quite as much as an audio/music person needs. As the technology has evolved and opened up more avenues of expression, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with sites like Etsy and eBay filling in the eCommerce pieces of the puzzle.

Podcasting, I believe, is doing the same thing for audio folks that all those websites did for writers -- it's creating tremendous (low-cost or even free!) opportunity for folks to express themselves creatively. And when you have a sizable demographic that has been cramped and frustrated and thwarted by an exclusivity-driven establishment, when the floodgates finally open, well, heck, the sky's the limit! I mean, really. We've been sitting around, honing our own opinions, mastering obscure technical skills... and now we get to put them all together. What more could you ask for!?

I predict that in another 10 years, podcasting will be on par with websites -- something that people just accept as something that's totally viable and in fact essential in doing business, communicating with others, and making your presence felt online. In fact, anyone who doesn't have a podcast or audio on their website will be considered a fallback on olden times, and woefully ill-equipped to do business in the new global marketplace. Given that the medium is providing a much-needed outlet for geeky, opinionated folks, and these folks have been cooped-up for longer than they care to think about, I believe that we're going to see enough podcasting techniques refined and perfected... and then distilled and packaged for general consumption, so the average business owner and corporate executive and home-based entrepreneur will be fully conversant in the lingo and terminology.

Yes, I firmly believe that podcasting (and online audio in general) is here to stay.

Copyright © 2006 by Kay Stoner - All Rights Reserved
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