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December 10, 2004
Podcasting Questions from KenRadio Connected List
This is a post I did for KenRadio's Connected mailing list in response to some questions about Podcasting and BitTorrent:
Let me see if I can address some of the topics and provide some data to think about.
There are two schools of thought about podcasting:
1. Podcasting is for personal dissemination of information about the life and times of the podcaster. Personal Podcasting. Audio Blogging.
2. Podcasting is another form of content distribution for the professional Radio Producer. Regular listeners have been asking for the ability to take the show programming in a portable file format for playback in an "offline" experience. Driving in your car, while exercising, or flying in a plane, etc. I want NPR and BBC Radio that I can download.
KenRadio and Webtalk Radio have been doing this for years but they were the exception rather than the rule.
Delivery of the bits
The podcasting developers got enough feedback during the initial stages of development to include the BitTorrent P2P solution into the final 1.1 iPodder application. While most podcasters haven't taken advantage of the technology, some have.
The application of BitTorrent to podcasts will solve the bandwidth expense issue over time.
More actual BT data later.
For those of you who don't know. I am the founder and chief developer of DownloadRadio.org/DownloadMedia.org a content aggregation portal that allows content producers a search engine and BT delivery of their content. We support Talk Radio, Music and Video formats.
We have done some integration into the podcasting model of our backend tools to help facilitate the podcasting community.
The BT Stats
Since DownloadRadio.org has been podcasting KenRadio, WebTalk Radio and Mark Levine's Inside Scoop on Washington for about 2 1/2 months, I thought I would share some actual statistics on those three shows. Most of the actual BT stats are from podcast clients that subscribe to the RSS/BT feeds we automatically generate.
Inside Scoop 2910 BT Downloads 28MB Avg show size 81.4GB Bandwidth Delivery
KenRadio 4225 BT Downloads 8MB Avg show size 33.8GB Bandwidth Delivery
WTR 2885 BT Downloads 12MB Avg show size 34.6GB Bandwidth Delivery
The audience for podcasting is still small but growing. As the media picks up more stories about it and the applications get easier to use for the end user, the growth will continue.
The world wide estimates for BitTorrents clients installed is about 10-20 million computers.
Those kind of numbers remind me of the old WindowsMedia and RealPlayer wars.
As for business models, the only models I can see is subscription and advertising.
Some content will be free and some will be paid. That's a fact of life. But take the cost of delivering the bits out of the mix and you have an interesting set of opportunities.
Just some fuel for the discussion.
Peter
http://downloadradio.org - Production
http://downloadmedia.org - Pre launch
Posted by Peter at December 10, 2004 12:23 PM