{"id":1501,"date":"2015-03-31T08:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-03-31T15:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/?p=1501"},"modified":"2015-03-30T13:57:27","modified_gmt":"2015-03-30T20:57:27","slug":"1501","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/2015\/03\/31\/1501\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 2)"},"content":{"rendered":"
The (brief) history of how podcasting came to\u00a0somewhat surprised me as I was researching this article. The medium has existed through all of my adult and adult-ish life. I had always assumed that it was some corporate project\u00a0(maybe of Apple?)\u00a0that\u00a0others jumped in on it.\u00a0It turns out, this is not the case at all. In fact,\u00a0almost the exact opposite occurred.<\/address>\n
The idea of serialized audio predates the\u00a0advent of mainstream digital personal audio devices. NPR\u2019s Planet Money ran an episode<\/a>\u00a0about a guy who claimed to have patented the concept. He ran a company called Personal Audio that\u00a0delivered\u00a0magazine articles read aloud to subscribers\u00a0via\u00a0cassette\u00a0tape. His\u00a0company was born, and eventually closed up, in the 1990\u2019s. Later, at the very beginning of the 21st century, serialized\u00a0audio\u00a0was offered in a form more closely resembling podcasts by\u00a0MP3 player manufacturer, i2Go<\/a>. The company offered a subscription service to proprietarily produced news, sports, entertainment, weather, and music\u00a0audio programs. Like\u00a0Personal Audio, i2Go\u00a0soon went out of business.\u00a0<\/address>\n
It wasn\u2019t until around 2005 that podcasting appeared in its current form.<\/a> A novel technical backend\u00a0was put together: sound files embedded within an R.S.S. feed. \u00a0This system allowed\u00a0for\u00a0listeners to conveniently\u00a0and automatically\u00a0receive\u00a0downloads of new episodes. An entrepreneuring\u00a0ex-MTV host wrote a program to\u00a0collect and play episodes for the end user. These innovations emerged without a clear plan for monetization or a corporate structure behind them. Likewise, the community of\u00a0early podcast producers was\u00a0an eclectic bunch. In late 2004, the\u00a0<\/a>New York Times<\/a> ran an article surveying the nascent podcast space.\u00a0They interviewed the\u00a0personalities behind\u00a0one of the most popular podcasts at that time: the\u00a0\u201cDawn and Drew Show.\u201d According to The Times, the\u00a0program\u00a0“is recorded in the living room of Ms. Misceli, an artist, and Mr. Domkus, who provides technical support for an office building in nearby Milwaukee\u2026\u201d. Co-star\u00a0Dawn Miscelli\u00a0reveals,\u00a0<\/address>\n
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I’m like that homeless person on the corner that just rants no matter who’s listening. I forget that Drew’s recording this online. Sometimes people will write us, and I sit back and say, ‘How do they know that?’ And then I go, ‘Oh, it’s on the Internet.\u2019<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/address>\n
Although\u00a0some established radio stations soon began to release their regular programming via podcast, podcasts emerged largely as\u00a0a rough-and-tumble, DIY space.\u00a0This\u00a0dynamic,\u00a0the idea of podcasting as\u00a0\u201ccitizens\u2019 media,\u201d is also apparent in an interview with media critic Jeff Jarvis that NPR ran in early in 2005<\/a>\u00a0 He proclaims,\u00a0<\/address>\n
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What excites me is not big media companies finding another way to create more media. What excites me about this movement is that it is the people talking, and that’s what’s great about it is you can hear all kinds of strange and wonderful things and new voices from the people\u2026<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/address>\n
Jarvins goes on to describe two of his favorite podcasts:\u00a0one from “a podcasting priest in Europe” and the other from “a\u00a0friend of mine named Fred Wilson… who created a podcast with this three kids and wife.” Clearly, the early days of podcasting were very grassroots in nature.<\/address>\n
It was only after the medium began to catch on\u00a0that corporate giants jumped into the fray. Later in 2005<\/a>, Apple introduced\u00a0podcasting functionality into its digital\u00a0audio software, iTunes. It wasn\u2019t until even later in 2005<\/a>\u00a0that NPR, a huge player in\u00a0today\u2019s podcast market, first entered\u00a0the scene.\u00a0Why did\u00a0attempts to launch the podcasting industry as a centralized business venture fail?\u00a0Why did podcasting emerge as a grassroots industry? What does the history\u00a0of podcasting\u00a0tell us about the industry? We\u2019ll look\u00a0at those\u00a0questions next week.\u00a0<\/address>\n
\u00a0<\/address>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The (brief) history of how podcasting came to\u00a0somewhat surprised me as I was researching this article. The medium has existed through all of my adult and adult-ish life. I had always assumed that it was some corporate project\u00a0(maybe of Apple?)\u00a0that\u00a0others jumped in on it.\u00a0It turns out, this is not the case at all. In fact,\u00a0almost the exact opposite occurred. The idea of serialized audio predates the\u00a0advent of mainstream digital personal audio devices. NPR\u2019s Planet Money ran an episode\u00a0about a guy who claimed to have patented the concept. He ran a company called Personal Audio that\u00a0delivered\u00a0magazine articles read aloud to subscribers\u00a0via\u00a0cassette\u00a0tape. Continue reading Podcasting: An Emerging Industry? (Part 2)<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":388,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/388"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1504,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions\/1504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/econ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}