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posted by LaminatorX on Saturday August 16 2014, @11:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the calling-Orson-Welles dept.

Ars Technica brings us 10 years of podcasting: Code, comedy, and patent lawsuits

While podcasting hasn't yet become as massive as other media, it's made its mark on the popular culture landscape despite being the baby of the group. A 2014 study from Pew Research shows that podcasting appears to have leveled off after its first decade the number of Americans who have "ever" listened to an audio podcast was down slightly from 29 percent in 2012 to 27 percent in 2013. Today, fifteen percent of the United States population still listens to podcasts weekly, according to a survey of over 2,000 Americans by Edison Research. If true, that would be around 48 million people in the US alone.

If we started a SoylentNews podcast would you be interested in subscribing?

What podcasts do you find yourself listening to?

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  • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Saturday August 16 2014, @11:59AM

    by Lagg (105) on Saturday August 16 2014, @11:59AM (#82051) Homepage Journal

    At this point, after many disappointments and people claiming to be talking about technical or otherwise interesting stuff and then proceeding to advertise an iWhatever or some other nonsense and thinly veiling it as a teardown or some kind of hacking topic I only listen to one, and that is the occasional Dwarf Fortress podcast.

    I'm not saying all podcasts are like that but a whole lot of them are so I mostly just watch tech talk videos and other such things. I'd probably subscribe to a soylent news one as I can be reasonably assured that the people participating will not trap it like this and actually know what they're talking about.

    Also, weren't we supposed to stop calling them podcasts? I forgot what the new name was, soundcasts or whatever. The name was always kind of silly because even when people literally pulled them to an ipod more people listened via their desktop machine or a laptop or something. But what sticks is what sticks I suppose.

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:25PM

      by opinionated_science (4031) on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:25PM (#82062)

      I agree. More importantly if transcripts are available, the technical content is more accessible.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @06:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @06:06PM (#82101)

      Webcasts.

      The one I hate to miss:
      Professor Richard Wolff's Economic Update. [kpfa.org]
      (Only archived for 2 weeks at Pacifica's Berkeley affiliate.)

      Pacifica's L.A. affiliate broadcasts the show but doesn't archive it consistently.
      Pacifica's Houston affiliate archives it, but their site is a mess.
      Pacifica's NYC affiliate also broadcasts it and has a page where it is archived, [wbai.org] (previously, for 3 months) but, be warned, that operation is currently in organizational and financial chaos.

      It's also available through Prof. Wolff's site, but requires 5x the bandwidth/storage space as Berkeley's speech-quality file.

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @12:45AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @12:45AM (#82174)

        "Netcast" also works. I remember Leo Laporte (on The Screen Savers) trying to convince people to not call them by a proprietary name.

  • (Score: 2) by zafiro17 on Saturday August 16 2014, @11:59AM

    by zafiro17 (234) on Saturday August 16 2014, @11:59AM (#82052) Homepage

    I for one would be interested in subscribing. I still find podcasts an under-exploited medium with huge promise, and it's currently a bit of a wasteland out there. The Register has a decent podcast, for example, but OSNews tried to do one and gave up. I think they take a hell of a lot of work to put together, edit, and do correctly, and the website of your average (even above-average!) website creator isn't necessarily the same skillset needed to do audio media.

    That said, it seems itunes messed up the podcasting scene. There are a lot of podcasters who now make you download an app for ipad or some other annoying thing that makes it not worth it. That's good, but makes things like dogcatcher (podcast program for android) or other equivalents of RSS readers where you can manage multiple podcasts less valuable.

    Lastly, everyone always points you to This Week in Tech (TWiT), and I can't figure out why - I think it's not very good. If someone has the time and energy to do a "Soycast" that would be pretty cool, and I'd be happy to help get the word out.

    --
    Dad always thought laughter was the best medicine, which I guess is why several of us died of tuberculosis - Jack Handey
    • (Score: 1) by tnt118 on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:49PM

      by tnt118 (3925) on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:49PM (#82064)

      TWiT used to be a much more in-depth, inside baseball-ish look at tech issues that IMO was quite good. As they grew they've dumbed down the complexity to appeal to a wider audience. I've stopped listening on a regular basis but some of their other podcasts (Computer Hardware/Google/Android) I still find quite enjoyable.

      --
      I think I like it here.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:01PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:01PM (#82349)

        "dumbed down the complexity to appeal to a wider audience."

        I'd disagree slightly in that they've moved from "this week in tech" to "this week in tech journalism" while keeping the same name.

        For a show about tech tangentially related journalism and PR scene they handle very complex issues in that particular field.

        In terms of general tech, yeah you're probably better off just watching Hak5 or listening to the cognicast or HPR or software engineering radio or floss weekly. TWiT doesn't talk about tech, it talks about journalists, businessmen, booth babes, and marketdroids talking about tech.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:09PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:09PM (#82060)

    Don't see myself subscribing to a Soylent podcast.
    Do listen to three podcasts regularly:
          Quirks an Quarks
          Comedy Factory
          Irrelevant Show
    All the above brought to you by Carl's^W I mean CBC.

  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:50PM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 16 2014, @01:50PM (#82065) Journal

    An interesting idea - but the answer would depend on what value the podcast is to me. So, if the content was technical, preferably science and IT related, and not too time sensitive then I would certainly subscribe. But as some of the stories on SN are now leaving technology and moving into new territory (and I'm an editor, but that is what the community seems to go for) then I am not interested in a podcast of similar material - any number of news sites can provide me with up-to-the-minute news reporting on such topics.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @03:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @03:16PM (#82079)

    The internet was originally desgined
    to communicate through static web
    pages and file downloads.

    Once 'Big Business' saw the internet
    as a marketing/sales resource to
    exploit, things went downhill from
    there.

    Now we have script-laden 'rich
    media' websites that tax the
    CPUs in our PCs, serve up slick
    Flash ads from overloaded
    adservers that have to be blocked
    at the HOSTS file level or with
    3rd party software like NoScript.

    With the meteoric rise in poularity
    of YouTube we now have lots of
    sites that will only give you
    content in the form of a large
    media file streamed to you.
    If you want to save it you have
    to find a way to do it as there
    are no download options. Very
    few have transcripts available
    so you can bypass all that and
    still be informed at a much
    faster rate in much less time.

    Unless it is purely music, any MP3
    audiocast files encoded above
    phone-qaulity mono (8KHz) is
    bloat and overkill.

    The only people who readily take
    advantage of audiocasts are
    commuters driving back and forth
    to work or other people on the
    go who have to watch where they
    are going when they are out and
    about. For everyone else,
    reading a transcript online is
    much more efficient than
    listening/watching the same
    content which takes longer.

    • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday August 17 2014, @05:37AM

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Sunday August 17 2014, @05:37AM (#82212) Journal

      Is there a reason you've written your text with such awfully short lines?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday August 18 2014, @09:26AM

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday August 18 2014, @09:26AM (#82522) Journal

        Is there a reason you've written your text with such awfully short lines?

        The way I see it, AC was trying to be more Web 2.0 like. All he was missing were the CPU sucking scripts. :P

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @05:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 16 2014, @05:34PM (#82097)

    I listen to a lot of podcasts, like 6-10 hours per day. (I need to drown out noise in the cube farm where I'm stuck, no radio reception, heavily firewalled internet. I sometimes listen to music, but usually would prefer to learn something.) Mostly I listen to science and tech podcasts, but I pick up a lot of history, some news, some panel discussions of current social issues, whatever.

    I'd be interested in discussion of some of the SN stories. Not just a rehash of what's posted, but discussion of technical, political, economic, whatever issues relevant to some of the stories. The discussion need not be by world-class experts, though that would be interesting, just by people who generally know what they're talking about and can bring in relevant information not mentioned in TFA. Geekspeak, coming out of KUSP in California, would be a good model, I think.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:16PM

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 17 2014, @07:16PM (#82355)

      AC indirectly brings up the good point that there is no "podcast format" there's just lots of different styles with a common delivery technology.

      Right off the top of my head, there's the "morning zoo/political roundtable", "the interview", "slowly produced college lectures". Also on another orthogonal axis there's frequency, daily, weekly, monthly, once in awhile. And finally topic, so is this basically a leadership monologue or summarize stories or summarize a story or background on a story or an interview or others.

      So at least 3 * 4 * 5 = 60 or so possible presentations for any specific theme.

      I listen to (or skip) around 10 or so hours per week of podcasts. I think it would be hard to find 10 hours per day of actual content. I listen to around 20 hours per week of audiobooks, both fiction and non-fiction.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by gtomorrow on Saturday August 16 2014, @07:03PM

    by gtomorrow (2230) on Saturday August 16 2014, @07:03PM (#82109)

    If we started a SoylentNews podcast would you be interested in subscribing?

    No, thank you.

    I generally prefer reading "news/information" which allows a non-linear consumption as opposed to "entertainment" (music, video) which i prefer to consume linearly.

    Then again, if Soylentnews was to start a podcast, i'm sure no one is going to force me to subscribe...i'd hope.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Saturday August 16 2014, @08:10PM

      by gallondr00nk (392) on Saturday August 16 2014, @08:10PM (#82121)

      Then again, if Soylentnews was to start a podcast, i'm sure no one is going to force me to subscribe...i'd hope.

      You mean you don't want the new SoyCast Beta, where they read out a pre-screened selection of what they deem to be +5 comments every episode? Where the audo file is padded for 15 minutes beginning and end by white noise and adverts? For shame, sir!

      Personally, I'm not sure I'd be too fussed by a Soylent podcast. I can't imagine the range of news topics we have here to translate very well to an audio format - I'm sure most of us have submissions we skip over on one topic or another.

      On the topic of tech podcasts generally, one I would suggest for BSD users is BSDNow [bsdnow.tv]. Even if you don't bother with the podcast and just read the tutorials, they're damned useful. As a knuckle-dragging bsd user and not a developer, some of the discussions go straight over my head, but it's certainly educational.

      • (Score: 1) by gtomorrow on Sunday August 17 2014, @05:49AM

        by gtomorrow (2230) on Sunday August 17 2014, @05:49AM (#82214)

        Heh! But all kidding aside, you bring up a point that illustrates exactly what i mean...

        Even if you don't bother with the podcast and just read the tutorials, they're damned useful.

        There are a few sites that i frequent that host tutorials. As far as i'm concerned, the podcast tutorials are far less digestable compared to written tutorials; the podcasts have a significantly higher noise-to-signal ratio. Like your "padded for 15 minutes" joke...wait...you were joking, weren't you? ;)

        And thanks for the BSDNow tip!

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @12:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 17 2014, @12:50AM (#82176)

    Maybe we should focus on the thin submission queue, first, before we start stretching the content out into a podcast.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @04:42PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 18 2014, @04:42PM (#82664)

    If we started a SoylentNews podcast would you be interested in subscribing?

    Fuck NO!