Ludovic Copéré

The business of podcasting

In the blogosphere, one of the latest focus of interest has been around podcasting, the innovative way of publishing, aggregating, syndicating and enjoying music online. As it is riding on both the wave of the booming digital audio player market (over 5 million iPods sold by Apple in its 2005 second quarter, and the strong competition with the 70% market leader driving the market even upper), and the ever-increasing readership and overall credibility of blogs as a content platform (just ask Rupert Murdoch), it is not surprising to see large media companies and content owners beginning to embrace the phenomenon: for instance, the BBC has been doing podcast trials and the "three podcasts were downloaded as MP3 files a total of 270,000 times in the first four months of the trial".

Again in the UK comes up Podshows, which I discovered this morning through DMeurope: two UK DJs, Paul Gambaccini and Tony Blackburn have started what is supposedly the first commercial podcasting service. Basically, it is an hybrid concept at the crossroads between a radio and a podcast repository. For roughly the same price as a legal download at one of the digital music stores out there, radio segments can be streamed on-demand or downloaded to digital players (through audio aggregators like iPodder). While the library is still in early stages, there is definitely potential in bringing both the niches at the end of the Long Tail along with households names and the top charts.

With such a service breaking the traditional barrier of instantaneity of radios and reconciliating broadcasting with downloading, I can but look forward to seeing more radios jumping on the bandwagon and adopting this concept. And what about a cross-over of Podshows and Last.fm?

Update (via Loïc): speaking of the BBC, it has just announced that it is expanding its podcasting trial to 20 more radio shows.

iPod U2, iPod Photo, iPod Europe

Plenty of fresh updates from Apple today:
- A special-edition 20GB iPod featuring U2 colors, signatures and preloaded tracks.
- iPod Photo, a 60GB iPod with color and photo slideshow capabilities.
- Pan-european iTunes Music Store, now in 9 new Euro-member countries.

One step closer indeed for Apple as a digital media company, while renewing its fashionable and designer appeal with the iPod. Let's just hope that with the photo feature, they have managed to keep the user experience simple and streamlined - as I think that it is what distantiate Apple's player from the rest of the crowd: a superb yet straightforward interface and overall integration between the mobile "on-the-go" and the desktop worlds. Once again, the gap between geeky features and real and palpable customer benefits, which Apple seems to understand pretty well so far.