Podcasting: A Lifetime's Music Will Cost you $37,000
A year ago, folks discovered this:
A Lifetime's Music Will Cost you $37,000
October 22, 2005
"Here's something to keep in mind next time you're thinking about ho much the latest music gadget costs. A lifetime of music will set you back $37,000.
Research by Prudential in the UK shows that people spend a massive $37,000 (UK £21,000) on music and music gear, making it a very expensive hobby. Prudential's figure includes everything from CDs, vinyl, and MP3 downloads, to the equipment it is played on (including CD players, speakers and ipods), plus music magazines, gigs, festivals and events."
So, something will have to give, if you're going to support your music habit. If you forego about 3,100 cases of beer, or 15,000 (give or take a few hundred) cups of expensive coffee, you can swing it. Or keep driving that car till it falls apart.
I don't drink, and I have a car that should last me another 10 years, if I properly maintain it, and I don't drink expensive coffee dispensed by artistes, so I'm thinkin' I should be fine...
But the larger issue here, I think, is the fact that podcasting is getting so huge, and people are all looking for content. I mean, if someone is willing to spend thousands of dollars on music (which will eventually become "stale", if you listen to it often enough), they're going to eventually be looking for more content to pack into their iPod.
That's where podcasters come in... And the opportunities are considerable. They were, a year ago, and they still are. It just keeps getting bigger, nay-sayers notwithstanding.
posted by Kay Stoner @ 4:37 AM
2 Comments:
nice article
Thanks! 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.
I think perhaps one of the reasons that print journalists are 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.
On the other hand, you have people (like me) 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.
It was really only a matter of time, till it 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.
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 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. 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 podcasting and online audio in general is here to stay.
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