Podcasting: The Future

Last night the Radio Academy held an event in London to talk about podcasting. It was interesting to a point, although whether or not we learnt a great deal, I'm not so sure.

You can listen to a podcast of the event at the Radio Academy's website (I'm pretty sure registration isn't required).

Some points we heard:

• A nice lady from the BBC did blurt out a few stats from an upcoming RAJAR podcast survey that are currently confidential - look out for them at the end of the month.
• Matt Wells at The Guardian is awfully annoyed that the BBC has so many podcasts - something like 150, especially considering that some of them have some very low take-up.
• Matt Wells also doesn't consider what he does as being "radio" - others dissented.
• There is money to be made, but advertising agencies are slow in believing in podcasts, and perhaps the more immediate cash comes from podcasts made for clients.
• Some were annoyed that video was considered more.

There was more, but as I say, I didn't come away thinking wow! I did have a short list of new podcasts to try however.

I'd disagree with some of Matt Wells was saying though. To be honest, even working in a commercial radio environment, I wouldn't be too fussed if Radio 4 podcast their entire output. As long as it didn't take a producer/editor too long to chop put the audio together (and much Radio 4 output is delivered as a final 30 minute piece of audio anyway), then there's simply no harm in making it available as a podcast however low the take-up is. If there's one thing that we've learnt from podcasting, it's that quite esoteric subjects can support podcasts because of the global nature of the available listenership.

And while I wouldn't want to get too hung up about the terminology - of course podcasts are "radio." I think we just need to redefine what we believe "radio" means. Once upon a time, it was a live broadcast, with just about everything being done there and then - so no recorded music, just relays of live concerts, live plays and the news read live. Then it became lots of pre-recorded music interspersed with live DJs and live(ish) news. These days, I can Listen Again or download programmes as well.

It stands to reason that the most technically adept podcasts are made by people who've been groomed in radio production techniques, and that includes Matt Wells' own podcasts. One commenter said that we're not fully making use of the medium, and too many podcasts sound like traditional radio programmes. That may be so, but it's because having a structure to what I listen to is no bad thing. There truly is nothing to stop someone with a laptop and a microphone making a podcast, but like television and film, there is a certain language or grammar (in television they'd include cutaways, close-ups, reaction shots, establishing shots) that guide us into the story. If I'm listening to music, it's really useful if someone can somehow tell me what I've been hearing. And at the start of a spoken word podcast, some idea of what they've got coming up is useful.

What I'd like to have heard more about is the inclusion of music in podcasts. Deals have been struck to allow thirty second clips of music into podcasts produced by either the BBC or commercial radio. But these deals are temporary, and only account for rebroadcasts of previously produced radio material. What about original shows? There are plenty of podcasts that use music of course, but the reality is that either they're not paying rights for those tracks, or they're using unsigned bands or having to deals with the composers/performers themselves. I don't see anything happening in a rush - particularly given the recent experiences of Pandora.

And how long should a podcast be? Many of the panel spoke about the freedom they had, not needing to fit into a 30 minute slot. It's certainly true that there's nothing more annoying than listening to an interviewee on the Today Programme only for them to get cut-off just as they're getting interesting due to time constraints. But editorial controls still need to be applied - I don't necessarily want to hear an hour and half of meandering. I find podcasts of over an hour "intimidating" when I see them in iTunes, while others at just three or four minutes could be longer.

Video is interesting. Yes, you can watch videos on your iPod or in iTunes. But there are different standards for different devices, and while I can listen to mp3s in my mobile phone, enhanced podcasts won't work. Video podcasts probably aren't "radio" because you have to watch as well as listen (obviously!). But then we're living in a world where there isn't any longer a clean delineation between different media types. The same device that lets me listen to TWIT lets me watch Mahalo Daily, so are they the same or is one radio and one TV? Yesterday Apple relaunched Apple TV - a device that does let me watch video podcasts on my TV. So maybe it is TV after all?

Still, all said and done, more has to be done to make podcasting mainstream. It's still too complicated. Lots of people don't understand what the word means, or how they do it. I spoke to a colleague yesterday who'd never downloaded a podcast for his iPod due to it being Mac formated, yet he now has a PC and didn't want to lose the music he has on it. That's more a shortcoming of iPods - why does an iPod have to be formated differently depending on what you plug it into? As Apple sells more Macs, users going the other way face the same issue, even though it can be overcome. Nonetheless, even with iTunes, it can still be made simpler.

2008 may become the year of DRM-free music, as people want to start loading their music onto their mobiles; their PSPs; their Xboxes; their sat navs. But downloading needs to be made simpler still. And we need more opportunities to do different things. Matt Wells spoke about dynamically inserting ads into Guardian Unlimited's podcasts. So when I download Football Weekly might determine what ad I hear. This goes someway towards what should be achievable, but let's go a step further. If we know your sex and age, delivering relevant advertising would be great. UK listeners might get different advertising to American listeners and so on. At the moment, we have one feed serves all, and short of making people register and subscribe to different streams according to their profiles, this isn't really possible. Yet...

Accountability and accurate targeting are ever important in the advertising world, so these are others areas that podcasting should perhaps address.