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Alex Williams Alex Williams
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Matt May Matt May
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Nicole Simon Nicole Simon
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Roland Tanglao Roland Tanglao
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Matt May is a Web accessibility specialist, and has written on the interaction of people and technology since 1995. He keeps his own weblog at bestkungfu.com, and produces a podcast called Staccato, which features Creative Commons-licensed music.

Alex Williamsblogs, consults and produces unconference style events, where people immerse in DIY media. These are fun occasions, designed for people who want to get together with authors, artists, technologists and leading thinkers to converse, eat, listen to music, write, shoot photos and post podcasts and videoblogs. Alex also works with companies to establish DIY approaches, where writing, photography, voice and video come together to create new conversations and communities. Alex is currently fascinated with digital photography. His girlfriend calls him a Flickrholic. Send Alex a nice message: alexhwilliams at gmail.com.

Nicole Simon loves blogging and podcasting, dashed with an European view. As consultant she helps to facilitate such tools for business purposes or personal publishing empires. She can be found at cruel to be kind and on her private blog Useful Sounds.

Roland Tanglao is a well known podcasting enthusiast and a passionate advocate of blogs, RSS, and social software as a means of online expression for people, organizations and businesses. He is a prominent participant in the blogosphere and online communities and one of the founders of Bryght and as Bryght's Chief Blogging Officer reads hundreds of blogs daily. He graduated from the University of Waterloo, worked at Nortel Networks where he ran its first internal corporate blog, has has been blogging since 1999, and was the first business blogging consultant in Canada.

Podcasting

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July 13, 2005

Are Indie Podcasters Facing A Threat From The Mass Media?

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Posted by Alex Williams

A story from USA Today speculates that this surge in popularity may make it tough for the indie podcaster.

Almost overnight, the mass media took up podcasting. You can now find podcasts from ABC, CBS, Disney, NPR, and shows like Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.

But most of the podcasts are repackaged from what these media players already produce. Since iTunes adoption, more than one million people have subsribed to podcasts.

Matt and I talked about this in this week's podcast. Apple iTunes may expose a wide larger audience but with it what are the costs for the indie? If a small, indie podcaster gets a surge in interest, then they may also go way over their alloted bandwidth from their host provider. That would cost them a bundle.

What does the surge in popularity mean for the indie? Is there a conflict between the big guys and the indies? Are the indies in danger with the mass media muscling in to the podosphere?

What do you think?

Comments (1) + TrackBacks (0) | Category: News and Commentary


COMMENTS

1. Mark Ramsey on July 14, 2005 09:39 AM writes...

Of COURSE the big media stuff is repurposed content. That's because that's what folks want to hear. "Batman Begins" is repurposed from an old comic strip - so is "Fantastic Four" and "Spider-Man." "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" is repurposed from a previous movie and book.

Familiarity leads to preference and preference represents popularity and media companies chase popularity.

The media companies are giving the audience what it asks for.

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