The advantages of Podcasting.

I have been working with online, streaming audio since 97 or so. The first time I ever needed to use audio on a site was for a prank call site I was building. The pranks were recorded onto cassette tape and I used to use a homemade 1/4 inch cable to run a line from a Walkman to to my mixing console and of course to my soundcard. The only solution I was aware of at the time, was Real Player. Around '97 Real Player was ALOT more prevalent than it is today. I have always hated it, from the way it sits in your system tray to the way the audio sounds. Keep in mind, this way before broadband was even a thought so the files needed to be optimized for dial-up, meaning I would usually do 2 versions, a 28k and a 56k version. They both sounded like you were listening to a badly encoded mp3 on an ipod turned up to maximum, down the hall and under water. In order for people to listen, they HAD to use Real Player, and they had to wait for the file to download and buffer for quite some time, and most importantly, they HAD to visit the website. Not really an ideal situation for distributing audio files to the maximum amount of users.

From 2002-2004 I produced a weekly 3-hour streaming radio show featuring local bands. The show was distributed as a Windows Streaming Media (.WMA) file. The show was 3 hours, but using compression I could get the file size down to about 40mb, still a pretty large file. Our webhost was a dedicated Windows 2000 server from Managed.com, it wasn't cheap (think $299 a month) We had to use a Windows server so we could take advantage of the windows media streaming server. This was a perfect set-up to handle our bandwidth demands, but again, to listen you had to visit the site, and to find it in the first place you had to use a search engine, and we had to spend ALOT of $ on SEO to get into those search engines.

So how does this relate to the advantages of Podcasting? First and foremost in my opinion is directories. Podcast directories are the rocket fuel of Podcast and in some ways, site promotion as well. Back in the day, when I was creating the above shows, the only effective way to get seen was through search engines (to say nothing of forums and advertising) there was no prank call directory ect. Podcast directories give you the ability to reach millions of qualified leads (listeners) hungry for the content you offer. By simply submitting your podcast to directories you not only reach new listeners and gain exposure for your podcast, you also benefit from having multiple inbound links to your site from each of the directories, thus increasing your search engine rankings in the process. This fact alone give enormous advantages to the podcaster over the person trying to gain listeners for a show on Live365.com or the like. If you have a podcast, you should be submitting your podcast to EVERY directory. Be sure to include a detailed description and keywords so people can find you once you are listed.

Another advantage: bandwidth. Using Bittorrent for Podcast distribution is a great way to save on bandwidth. Read more on using it here.

I also am thrilled with the subscription end of Podcasting as well. The fact that someone can find your Podcast through a directory, and if they like it, subscribe and never have to think about it again, they can listen and enjoy it at thier leisure. More on subscriptions later...