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Chris Seibold at “applematters” has an interesting analysis of the state of podcasting, and possible future trends.

When Hadley Stern opined that podcasting would be dead within a year the notion gave me serious pause. After all I am involved in a podcast in a very small way and, since I lack any natural ability, I put a lot of work into each segment. I’d hate to think all my efforts would be for naught within a year. Clearly some research was needed. Was Hadley right? Is podcasting nothing more than a short-lived fad? To make the decision I listened to a weekend worth of podcasts. My conclusion: podcasts aren’t going away any time soon but I sure wish most of them would.

One thing I think Chris may be missing is that podcasting, just like blogs and web sites, does not exist in a resource-constrained environment. There are no frequency slots to bid for, no huge up-front infrastructure costs for transmitters, and so on. The barrier to entry is low, so people will continue to make podcasts.

The key concept in podcasting is that it is narrow and specific. I can keep looking and listening and finding stuff that’s closer and closer to what I want. I’d rather listen to podcasts that are perfect for me - I don’t care if they are “popular” or “big". On the other hand, for advertising-driven content, where audience figures matter, content providers are pretty much forced to produce output that’s least inoffensive to the largest identifiable demographic. That makes it bland. That makes it same-old. That makes it like most radio and TV programming. This stuff will serve the fine purpose of drawing listeners in to podcasting, but many of them will move on, once they realise there’s more out there.

Sure, there will be “big names". But unlike radio, TV, or movies, they won’t find it easy to “crowd out” the smaller players. I don’t listen to Adam Curry, I don’t read slashdot or boing boing, I don’t queue up to see the “summer blockbuster", or buy chart music. There are a lot like me - what we have in common is that we are not the same.

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