Will the iPod Kill the Radio Star? Profiling Podcasting as Radio

Abstract

The Apple iPod has not only become a ‘must have’ style accessory for the ‘wirefree’ generation but has also revolutionized the way we consume music. At the time of writing, (November 2005) the revolution has already started in the audio world, and has been going for the last 18 months. ‘Podcasting’ allows anyone with a PC to create a ‘radio’ programme and distribute it freely, through the internet to the portable MP3 players of subscribers around the world. Podcasting not only removes global barriers to reception but, at a stroke, removes key factors impeding the growth of internet radio: its portability, its intimacy and its accessibility. This is a scenario where audiences are producers, where the technology we already have assumes new roles and where audiences, cut off from traditional media, rediscover their voices.