Podcasting has been with us Apple fans since June of 2005 when Steve Jobs announced that iTunes had built in Podcasting support and also a place to download them from. But lets look at where Podcasting actually originated, before Steve Jobs and Apple, and even before Adam Curry.
What makes a Podcast different from a normal audio file is that it is syndicated via some kind of feed, the original concept was thought up by Tristan Louis but really got taken seriously in October 2000 when Dave Winer developer of RSS implemented a basic form of Podcasting into one of his feeds. The idea took years to catch on and only a small group of users had the idea running initially, as aggregation and syndication grew in popularity the possibilities became realised and the standards were slowly expanded.
In October of 2003, Winer and some friends organised Bloggercon, the first seminar of its kind it aimed to bring bloggers from around the world to one place and share their thoughts and experiences. At Bloggercon Kevin Marks was demonstrating an application that downloaded an RSS enclosure (audio file) and passed them straight into iTunes for uploading to an iPod, many applications of a similar style can be found today with the main names being Transitr and iPodder.
The term Podcast is obviously an amalgamation of the name iPod and Broadcasting, it unknown why the term was coined as when Podcasting was developed the iPod was very much an unheard of product, but as time has past the term has grown and even gained some controversial views; with Robert Scoble claiming that the term should be changed to Blogcasting.
Over the last 8 or 9 months since Apple built in Podcasting support into iTunes the popularity has grown immensely, so much in fact it looks like the smaller original Podcasters are being pushed out of the picture. When Steve Jobs presented Podcasting to the Apple world he described it as "Tivo for Radio", he was right but the idea wasn't realised until a few months later. During the first weeks of Podcasting the top 10 downloads list on iTMS (UK) was dominated by the likes of "Inside Mac", "MacCast" and "macTV Videocast". Now a days Radio 1 dominates the top 10 and the iTMS Podcasting front page is filled with adverts for the "Al Murray Show" and "The Times Podcast".
I can only think that traditional broadcasters using Podcasting has become so popular is due to our more mobile world, with millions of people owning iPods Podcasting becomes a great way to receive radio on a device that isn't capable of doing so without an accessory.
Recently the domination was taken one step further, LBC Radio in the UK became the first Podcast publisher to begin charging for downloads, the cost is £2.50 for one month, £7 for three months or £10 for 6 months. It should be noted that LBC still provide a free Podcast to anyone but they are charging for more premium content. But this whole thing is taking the original idea away, sure everyone wants to make money and certainly cornering this massive success is a great way of doing it but radio is not dying and Podcasts are for the extra enjoyment of listeners not to make further content and then charge a premium to listen to it.
So has the format that was meant to bring the smaller guy to the forefront flipped upside down and pushed the bigger boys to the forefront blocking out the smaller guy?