This nostalgic episode briefly explores the background history and a few turning points in technology from the 1990s to 2000s that would result in what we now know as podcasting.
A Brief History of Podcasts – Voice of Sayar Henry
Hey everyone! This is yours truly, Sayar Henry, and thank you so much for downloading this episode. I hope you’re doing great today and are ready for Episode No. 43. Welcome to the show!
All right!
First things first. Let’s talk about the elephant in the room – the advertisements. Did you hear any ads just before you heard my greetings and introduction of this episode? Well, if you did, congratulation my friend! You have officially become a supporter of Voice of Sayar Henry by simply tuning in to this podcast from the right location. How cool is that!
Now, before diving into today’s topic, I want to take you guys back to one of my previous episodes that was published a few months ago. That one was done in Burmese language, and it was named ‘Not An Episode’. Do you guys remember that? If you don’t or haven’t heard of that one, don’t worry. I’m going to tell you about it briefly now.
So, in that episode, I talked particularly about my decision to accept monetary support from my listeners by setting up a creator profile on Patreon. Well, that time, I specifically mentioned that my primary goal for doing that was to sort out a banking issue. But it was also a way for any potential listeners who really care about the quality and sustainability of this podcast to support me in as much or little as they want. However, there was a problem with that approach. You see, most of the listeners who are willing to support this podcast don’t have a Visa card or any form of debit card that can be added to a Patreon account. And those who do have these cards seem to be struggling with financial matters of their own. So I had to solve the aforementioned banking problem all by myself and I learned something that I already knew: that none of my listeners are ready for this modern culture of value exchange. For some, it is the just difficulty of payment method; for others, it’s the decline of the country’s economy; and for others, it’s purely the result of misinformed culture and institutionalization.
So yours truly decided to go about it from a different angle. Long story short, Voice of Sayar Henry is now created, published, licensed, and distributed under the management of a US company. That means, there will be some types of products and services — now and in future — that is somehow associated with this podcast or my voice. So if, by any chance, you are interested in making some business deals with this podcast, whether it is for voice-over services, sponsorships, or consultation, please reach out to me by filling the contact form from our website. Apart from that, if you are just a regular fan of this awesome podcast, please be informed that there will be some ads in this episode and in future ones, depending on the length of each episode. But, I promise you, my dear friends, that hearing these advertisements will not just support the podcast you love; it will also give you a chance to observe the modern ways of marketing, smarter ways of raising issues, and ultimately, an opportunity to witness the way technology is shaping the world today. And I think that’s pretty cool for me and my listeners.
So, now that you have been properly briefed, let’s get into the topic of this episode. As you have already seen in the title, I’m going to talk about A Brief History of Podcasts. If you want to learn how in the world the word podcasting came into being, how the technology associated with it had evolved, and how the world has been changed by this modern form of entertainment, this one is for you. So keep listening!
Have you ever wondered why the word podcasting sounds very similar to the century-old-word known as broadcasting? Both of the terms end with -casting. So in terms of linguistic and etymology, broadcasting is like the big brother of podcasting. And if you look at the modern history of mankind, broadcasting has always been about transmission of audio and video content. But the disadvantage of radio and TV broadcasting is that it’s a synchronous communication. It means both the transmitter and the receiver must be present at the same time. For example, if you want to consume your favorite program from a radio station or a TV channel, you have to tune in at the exact same time that the program is on air. If you can’t manage that, there is no way for you to see or hear that program unless the broadcasting network decides to air it again. But that was back in the days before the broadband internet was available.
With the advent of the internet, in the mid-1990s, some media and technology companies started to develop different types of software that can provide radio stations with a digital version of their talk shows and music programs. That was how the era of internet radio began. Within a few years from that, some websites even started to provide audio subscription services, including those with downloadable audio shows and on demand streaming talk shows. The key factor differentiating this technology from traditional radio is that it is an asynchronous transmission. It means listeners could pause, play, skip, or restart the audio files in any way they wanted, and at any time they desired. Although it was pretty exciting compared to the classic radio experience, people at the time had no idea that a new technology was on its way to lay the foundation for not just podcasting, but also today’s social media platforms.
I’ll tell you more about it in a second, but it’s time for an ad break now. So if you are a listener from US, there’s a high chance you are going to hear some advertisements. Here we go.
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And we are back to the show.
Now I was just talking about an emerging technology that would change the way people surf the internet in the year 2000. It was like this.
In 1999, Netscape, the company known for developing one of the earliest internet browsers, introduced the concept of RSS feeds. Now, RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a cool name, yes, but more importantly, it is a standardized system that allows users and applications to access updates from other websites in a way your computer can understand. So, in another word, RSS is the foundation for what we now know as following a Facebook page or subscribing to a YouTube channel.
However, it wasn’t until October 2000 that the idea of attaching sound and video files in RSS feeds was proposed. A few months later, two guys collaborated on a tool for this idea. One of them is called Dave Winer. He’s a software developer, an entrepreneur, and a leading blogger at that time. He designed and implemented a dialect of RSS that worked better than that of Netscape’s. He discussed his ideas with Adam Curry who was a media personality and also an internet entrepreneur. Two of them started incorporating this new functionality of RSS on their websites and soon they became the earliest people that combined blogging with audio. In fact, they were the driving force that popularized audioblogs of that time.
Now, there was another interesting tech story happening in those years too. It was the success and the popularity of Apple’s iPod, the first MP3 player that can store 1,000 songs and a 10-hour battery in a truly small package. Because of that wonderful product, people started listening to more songs and audio files than ever before. Not surprisingly, in 2003, technologists and developers started to come up with solutions that can move MP3 files from RSS feeds to iTunes and eventually to iPod.
Then, about a year later, journalist Ben Hammersley, who was writing for The Guardian and the BBC at the time suggested a term that could describe this new technology of automatic downloads and synchronization of audio content. He combined Apple’s iPod with the traditional word broadcasting and started to refer to this process as podcasting. From there, one thing led to another. The audio-blogging community picked up this term very quickly; more and more people started to Google the meaning of this new word every day; Wikipedia defined the page “podcasting” in 2004; BBC became one of the earliest mainstream media that made its program available as podcasts; then, Apple added a directory of podcasts to its iTunes service in 2005. And the rest is history as you know it.
Two decades later, podcasting has become one of the most popular forms of entertainment in the 21st century. According to the recent industry reports, there are more than 2 million active podcasts in the world, 48 million podcast episodes, and hundreds of billions downloads and streams. It’s growing like crazy!
And with that number of demand and supply, it has also become a very lucrative industry in recent years due to the quick adoption by digital marketers and advertising agencies that are closely working together with podcasting networks, analytics providers, and show creators. For example, The Joe Rogan Experience was the highest-earning podcast in 2019, grossing $30 million dollars. And these numbers are not going to stop there. At current rate, the podcast ad revenues in the United States alone are expected to surpass $2 billion dollars by 2023! Besides, revenue from ads and sponsorships is not the only way a podcast can make money. Podcasters can also have multiple streams of income by offering direct donation, paid subscription, organizing life-events, or licensing their work for movie adaptation, and the list goes on.
Now, if you have been listening up to this point, you may even find it tempting to start your own podcast soon because it seems like everybody is doing it and making a ton of money, right? But, no, my friends. It’s not that simple. In reality, all that crazy amount of money you can get as a successful podcaster is only possible when you have a ridiculously large audience. We’re talking about millions of followers here. Because that kind of revenue only makes sense with millions of listeners. And that volume of listeners only makes sense if you started your podcast like 10 years ago. If people like you and I decide to start a podcast this year with barely a few thousand listeners and try to monetize it, we’ll only be making a few dollars a month — which sounds like a joke!
So based on my podcasting experiences and from the next-level knowledge I have acquired over the last few months, my advice to young creators or aspiring podcasters in Myanmar or other small countries alike is that you should not start podcasting if your primary goal is to make money quick. I mean if you just want to start experimenting with podcasting, sure, go for it. It’s still a pretty cool thing to do in 2022. I support you 100%. But I just don’t want you to get into the game with the wrong mindset. This is a highly competitive space in terms of getting attention and financial success, and you can’t even hope for a solid income especially if your target audience is not in the US. And that’s because all of the dominant advertising networks are looking for US creators whose main audience are residing in the US so that they can advertise and sell products and services to these people. However, if you are in this to play the long game and intend to challenge this whole podcasting landscape for the benefit of all the international creators, I give you my highest respect, buddy. Maybe you and I should even collaborate in taking some steps in that direction!
Well, even if you are not a creator, you can help us spread the idea that podcasts are a great source of education and entertainment that can benefit both the listeners and the creators. If enough people are listening to podcasts in your society, the key players in this industry will start to do something about it in order to maximize their profits, which in turn will have a positive impact on your society too. Because, you know, the modern world is driven by monetary dynamics.
Alright, ladies and gentlemen, we have come to the end of this episode. I really hope that you’ve learned something about the world of podcasting, the background history of it, and started to see how the world today is shaped by the combination of technology, media, and advertising. I still haven’t covered some other detailed knowledge about podcasting… but … I guess that’s a thing for another episode in future. Thank you for listening, and I hope you come back for more. Stay safe and have a meaningful day ahead. I’ll see you in the next one. Goodbye for now!
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