The Future of Podcasting: Dave Slusher

The last post of our Exclusive Feature, The Future of Podcasting!  Today's writing is from Dave Slusher of the Evil Genius Chronicles.  Dave has been podcasting "since the early days".  I'm honored that he invested the time to contribute to this feature.

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The future of podcasting is a tough nut to crack, considering that there is so little present and past to it. I was in this pyramid scheme early - listening to podcasts, creating them, and writing tools to handle them. Even now, those days are less than 6 months old. This mode of communication and distribution is powerful and caught the public imagination in a big way. I've never seen something take off so quickly, especially not a whole new communication infrastructure. Of course, being built out of barely repurposed bits of existing infrastructure helped out a lot with that.

Let me divide this look ahead into a few sections - what I want to happen, what I fear will happen, and what I expect to happen.

WHAT I WANT FROM THE FUTURE OF PODCASTING

It's hard to define exactly what I want podcasting to bring, because what I most want is to have a landscape created that I can't recognize.  Podcast has a low cost of entry, low cost of production and reasonably low cost of distribution (this is what ends up hurting people who become unexpectedly popular, that shocking moment when the first bandwidth bill shows up). I want all of that to fuel a rewriting of the rules, an unleashing of imagination that will lead to new formats, new types of listening that seem obvious in retrospect that none of us were bright enough to create. I'd have never dreamed that there would be popular podcasts about bowel movements and jostling testicles, but there are.

I want to see new and different forms of drama come about. I'd love to see an independent film promote itself not just like Skinnybones - a podcast about the production - but with drama set in and around the film. It would be wildly interesting to listen to a podcast that gives the backstory as an audio play. Novelists could do similar and create scripts from the excised scenes and thus create audio plays that don't merely adapt another work but expand and fill in the gaps and create a deeper involvement with the story and characters.

I want the creators down the long tail to use this medium as their mechanism for getting into the attention economy. Indie bands and record labels need to realize this is a huge opportunity for getting their music out into the ears of potential listeners. Michael Butler and his band American Heartbreak are already doing this. I've heard dozens if not hundreds of great bands that are too good to be so deeply under-appreciated. Podcasting offers them an opportunity to get out there, to do a better job at lowering the friction in matching the right music with the right listener. They are out there, and with less work than ever, creators can enable their potential fans to find them.

Most of all, what I want from podcasting is to instill in a whole new generation of people a love of the audible. Seventy years ago, the audio was a primary mode of interaction as family gathered around the radio for FDR Fireside chats or Burns and Allen. Part of what drives my affection of podcasting is displaced affection for radio - affection that the bland commercial and public offerings of the present day have forfeited. I want to hear people taking chances and trying new things.  It's been decades since I heard that on the corporate commercial airwaves, and it has been a rarity even on the public bands. Give me back my ears, allow me to enjoy listening to entertainment again. Is that so much to ask?

WHAT I FEAR FROM THE FUTURE OF PODCASTING

Much of what I like about the podcasting game is that has such a low ante. Nothing prevents big players, in the form of existing stations or show producers from publishing. On the other hand, nothing prevents any individual with access to a computer, a network connection and a cheap microphone from creating one either. My fear is that the existing media oligarchs will not just enter this arena, but try to establish artificial gates to preclude individuals from podcasting.

I think it would be great to have the largest radio shows distributed via podcast. If I could get the Howard Stern show that way, I would listen. I fear that rather than the media oligarchs embracing this world and allowing it to exist as a level playing field, one of two options might happen. The first is that they ignore it completely. The second is that Viacom or Clear Channel or Infinity work to lobby for
regulation or some form of rules that favor the large organizations, much like they and the RIAA did for the webcasting rules with the Library of Congress.

The beauty of podcasting is that it can allow for creativity to run amok. The oligarchs are in the business of putting out the same old same old (they don't have to be, but that's what they've chosen to make of it) and as such are the natural enemies of creativity, of the long tail. My hope is that long tail thinking prevails, my fear is that the enormous resources in the tall head will attempt to un-level the
playing field to give the large organizations an unnatural advantage.

WHAT I EXPECT FROM THE FUTURE OF PODCASTING

The future is arriving at an alarming rate. To make a guess about what the near and far future will hold is difficult. I firmly expect that there will be quite a bit of turnover in the roster of most popular podcasts. Much has been made of the power law and the effect of the top podcasts referencing each other to the exclusion of others. In practice, I think we will see more new popular podcasts and a number of current highly listened ones dropping in relative popularity. I don't think this will necessarily come from a decrease in listeners but in a lagging behind of gaining new ones. I think the market for podcasts will expand several orders of magnitude in the coming months and years.

I predict in a few years it will be transparent and not something with so much "buzz". When a listener looks to be amused or entertained, they will have a range of choices that include television, DVDs, radio, podcasts, webcasts. Podcasting will simply take a place as one more distribution method in a continuum of methods. It will become commercially exploited, people will make money off it, and I predict that much of this money will come in ways no one is expecting or predicting (ie, not advertising or the standard models from previous media.) Not only do I expect that, I am on the edge of my seat waiting for it.

The coming times will be interesting, possibly in the Chinese curse sense. Many people will find their horizons broadened, their connections widened and the distance of this planet shrink as our reaches expand. Engaging with and learning about other cultures will get easier and easier. Finding entertainment options will require ever less time and energy. The TiVo on-demand model will move from the TV to the ears, the listeners will be more empowered and will not have to listen to something that doesn't meet their needs because "it is the best thing on."

I can't wait.

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tags: podcasting | tivo | radio | clear channel | riaa | howard stern | dave slusher