The Day the Podcast Went Pro

A decent rundown of the two paths of podcasting - the free and the paid. Paid content in podcasting is definitely coming.

To the listener, podcasts are essentially free, like many things on the Internet. But is the free nature of the podcast in jeopardy as businesses start to gain interest in its marketing potential?

Zippy Aima, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, is betting that the dollar signs might eventually win out over the get-it-for-free marketplace that currently exists.

“Having been in the market for about one year, podcasting is in its initial phase of acceptance. But it is becoming a fast-growing medium,” Aima said. “Hence, enterprises need to tap the potential of this technology, which will be generating revenues in the future.”

Well, yeah. Except that enterprises can also use this as a mechanism for advertising and brand reinforcement. I don’t think HP (as an example) would be particularly successful in getting people to pay for a podcast about HP computers or even about computing. But what a company like HP can do is leverage podcasting to enhance their brand or supplement their support services.

Now that being said, I think these are some fairly inaccurate statements in the article and by Bruce Chandley:

It is easy and inexpensive to make.

“People think it’s more complicated than it is,” said Chandley. The cost of engineering a podcast varies with the audio skill of the originator, he said. Typically, a newcomer can get started for under $500. The price tag climbs to $1,000 to $2,000 for broadcast-quality audio equipment.

It takes only moderate computing skill to convert a podcast program to a form that is downloadable and playable on iPods, Chandley said. “iPods are one of the easiest aggregates. It is very simple to do.”

No, actually creating a podcast is really difficult for most people and just saying it’s easy ain’t going to make it so. Maybe I should start getting permission to publish the emails I get from readers asking for assistance (which I gladly give, for free) with podcasting because all of the instructions people have found are insanely difficult to follow and poorly written. So, no, podcasting isn’t easy and people are correct in thinking it’s complicated.