Podcasting – Just Clever Branding?

Why all the hype? Seriously? Apparently the podcast is a ‘mainstream medium in the making’ but why?

A podcast is simply an mp3 file delivered via RSS, except it isn’t anymore. This has, in the past, always made it a bit confusing and a techie only medium. However, since iTunes 6 every time you open your computer jukebox you can just choose the podcast you want to listen to and download it. Easy peasy.

Quite frankly podcasting is just a flash name for downloading pre-recorded content. If this technology had come about in a slightly different manner, say the radio broadcasters en masse had decided to put up old programmes for download at the listeners leisure (as the BBC did in fact do) we would just see it as a logical connection for radio and the internet to make. Instead, people enclosed mp3 files inside RSS feeds and jumping on the iPod bandwagon downloading audio content from the internet became this revolutionary technology, podcasting.

What I’m essentially saying is that the podcast, for all its hype, is just a rebranded mp3 download.