They’re called “Podcasts”

Oct 15, 2024 04:00 PM - 3 months ago 145250

Before a podcast was a “podcast,” it was… well, it wasn’t really overmuch of anything. A fewer of the early believers called them “audio blogs,” and the journalist often credited pinch coining the word “podcast” besides offered “GuerillaMedia” arsenic an replacement successful the very aforesaid article. (And actually, there’s plentifulness of statement complete precisely who coined the word and when. The history of the podcast is much contentious than you’d think.)

It was successful 2004, though, that galore of the earliest names successful on-demand audio began to smush “iPod” and “broadcast” into the connection we’ve travel to cognize arsenic the measurement we each download and perceive to shows now. In the 20 years since podcasts became a thing, they’ve changed dramatically — the earliest pods were mostly conscionable dudes blogging into microphones, but now the mean supports everything from award-winning investigations to communicative fabrication connected par pinch thing you’d find connected TV. And to beryllium fair, a batch of dudes blogging into microphones.

On this section of The Vergecast, we spell backmost 2 decades to the first days of the podcast. We talk to immoderate of the group who created the earliest shows, decided really the format would work, and developed some the exertion and the norms that still specify the manufacture today. Like truthful galore stories during the early days of the internet, it involves a mini number of group (and a Yahoo mailing list) who had nary thought really large their small task would get.

Then we deed the skip fastener to coming and look astatine wherever podcasts are headed next. For years, companies for illustration Spotify and Amazon thought they could bargain podcasts and build their ain backstage audio empires, and galore years and lucrative contracts later, that hasn’t really worked. But there’s nary denying that the things that make the podcasting manufacture unfastened and absorbing and nosy besides make it aged and outdated and difficult to move into modern products. Will the adjacent 20 years of podcasts look for illustration the first 20? Or are we headed for a early of audio successful which the connection “podcast” doesn’t moreover fresh anymore? And for that matter, does it moreover make consciousness now?

More