The internet has given opportunity for people to broadcast their message out to the world, whether it is blogging to showcase their writing talent or YouTube to create video content. Podcasting, however, is gaining popularity among many content creators lately. It gives power to every individual to become a broadcaster and share the message out to the world.
Podcast is any digital (mostly audio or video) content uploaded on the internet as an episodic show that could be streamed online or downloaded on device such as phone, tablet or laptop and are available on the internet anytime. The beauty of podcast lies in the fact that you don’t need to be listening it live as is the case for radio shows. Podcasts have narrow topics and targeted audiences which makes it super-niche thing.
Podcasting has history dating back to 2004 when Adam Curry and Dave Winer from the United States first became successful in enclosing audio in RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds. Since then there has been slow gradual growth in podcast listeners and creators. However, a criminal investigation podcast called Serial that investigated the murder case of Hae Min Lee, a US high school girl made podcast a household name in the US in 2014. In 2013, Apple reported reaching 1 billion downloads of podcasts on its platform iTunes which still remains the major platform for podcast consumption. Today there are over 200,000 Podcasts in Apple directory in 14 different categories such as arts, technology and politics in many different languages.
Listeners can easily find and listen to podcasts on the topic of their interest. There are podcasts about football matches to cooking recipes. There is an inbuilt app on iPhone called Apple Podcasts and several apps such as podcast addict and Castbox are available for android users. Listeners can find at least a dozen of podcasts on the topic of their interest in these podcast apps. Once they find the podcast they are searching for, they can listen in by streaming online or download for later consumption. It has been found that many listeners listen to podcasts during travelling, jogging, doing daily chores, etc. This is a major benefit with audio content as you cannot watch videos or read blog articles everywhere.
It is very easy to start a podcast for any creator. All one need is a message to share, a microphone to record and an editing software to edit audio. To begin with, one can use inbuilt microphone of his/her own phone or laptop and the best recording and editing software Audacity is completely free to download and use. It has very simple interface and one can learn editing using Audacity easily as there are hundreds, if not thousands, of tutorials available on YouTube. Once they have their first episode ready, they can submit their show to iTunes and other directories for approval. Once these directories approve your show, you can now publish episodes every week or day depending on your content publishing schedule.
Bijay Gautam is Producer and Host of The Inspiring Talk podcast. His podcast could be found at http://theinspiringtalk.com You can send podcast related queries at bijay@theinspiringtalk.com. Fb, Twitter, Instagram: bijayspeaks
