SEPTEMBER 30 2019 – INTERNATIONAL PODCAST DAY! with Amy Cowan

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL PODCAST DAY! Join us as we celebrate the thing that we're doing while we're celebrating it! Today we're partying with pal and beloved guest Amy Cowan (aacowan.com)!! LET'S PARTY!!

Find Holiday Party online – Patreon: patreon,com/HOLIDAYPARTY Twitter: @HOLIDAYPARTYPOD / Instagram: HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST / Facebook: @HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST / HOLIDAYPARTYPODCAST.COM

Find Alyssa – Twitter: @alyssapants / Instagram: lettertalkpodcast / alyssapants.com

Find Disa – Twitter: @cinnamonenemy / Spotify: open.spotify.com/user/1243777842

SHOW NOTES

• History/Fun facts about the holiday
  • According to Wikipedia, a podcast is “an episodic series of digital audio or video files which a user can download to listen. Alternatively, the word “podcast” may refer to the individual component of such a series or to an individual media file
  • Podcasting often uses a subscription model, whereby new episodes automatically download via web syndication to a user’s own local computer, mobile application, or portable media player
  • Some have labeled podcasting a “converged medium,” that is bringing together audio, the web, and portable media players, as well as a disruptive technology, having caused some in the radio business to reconsider established practices and preconceptions about audiences, consumption, production, and distribution
  • Listeners typically consume podcasts for free, and producers can usually create them for little to no cost. This sets podcast apart from the traditional 20th-century model of “gate-kept” media.
  • Podcasting is a horizontal media form--producers are consumers, consumers may become producers, and both can engage in conversations with each other
  • Variants of podcasts include 
    • Enhanced podcasts, which can display images synchronized with audio. These can contain chapter markers, hyperlinks, and artwork
    • Podcast novels, also known as serialized audiobooks or podcast audiobooks. This is a literary form that combines the concepts of a podcast and an audiobook. Like a traditional novel is a work of long literary fiction; however this form of the novel is recorded into episodes that are delivered online over a period of time and in the end is available as a complete work for download. They can vary from new works from new authors that have never been printed, to well-established authors that have been around for years, to classic works of literature that have been in print for over a century 
    • Video podcasts, which include video clips. Web television series are often distributed as video podcasts
    • Oggcast, which is a podcast recorded and distributed exclusively in the Vorbis audio codec with the Ogg container format, which is a format state that is unrestricted by software patents. The name is derived from “ogging”, jargon from the computer game Netrek, which came to mean doing something forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on future resources
    • Political podcasts, which focus on current events, usually last 30 minutes to an hour, often featuring journalists, politicians, pollsters, writers, and others with credentials in the public sphere. Most have a host-guest interview format and are broadcast each week based on the news cycle
    • Podguide, an enhanced audio tour podcast. It’s a single audio file where each chapter displays a picture and a number of what to look at a certain stopover. The numbers correspond to the numbers on a map that can be downloaded via the link incorporated into the artwork of the chapters in the podguide. Wikipedia describes it as being like a soundseeing tour but with pictures and a map, so users can take the tour themselves
  • It was previously known as “audioblogging”, and has its roots dating back to the 1980s. With the advent of broadband internet access and portable digital audio playback devices, podcasting began to catch more mainstream hold in late 2004.
  • In the 1980s, Radio Computing Services (RCS) provided music and talk-related software to radio stations in a digital format
  • Before online music digital distribution, the MIDI format as well as the Mbone, Multicast Network was used to distribute audio and video files. The Mbone was a multicast network over the internet used primarily by educational and research institutes, but there were audio talk programs
  • In 1993, Carl Malamud launched Internet Talk Radio which was the “first computer-radio talk show, each week interviewing a computer expert.” It was distributed “as audio files that computer users fetch one by one.” Malamud said that listeners could pause and restart the audio files at will, as well as skip content they didn’t like
  • In 2001, Applian Technologies introduced Replay Radio, a TiVo-like recorder for Internet Radio Shows. One of the features was a Direct Download link, which would scan a radio publishers site for new files and copy them directly to a PC’s hard disk. The first radio show to publish in this format was WebTalkGuys World Radio Show, produced by Rob and Dana Greenlee
  • In September 2000, the first system that enabled the selection, automatic downloading and storage of serial episodic audio content on PCs and portable devices was launched from early MP3 player manufacturer, i2Go, which introduced a digital audio news and entertainment service called MyAudio2Go. This enabled users to download episodic news, sports, entertainment, weather, and music in audio format for listening on a PC, the eGo portable audio player, or other MP3 players. The app could be programmed to automatically download the latest episodic content from user selected content types to a PC or portable device. Unfortunately, the service succumbed after a little over a year, due to the i2Go company running out of capital during the dot-com crash.
  • In October 2000, the concept of attaching sound and video files in RSS feeds was proposed in a draft by Tristan Louis, and implemented  by Dave Winer. Winer had received other requests for “audioblogging” features and had discussed the enclosure concept with Adam Curry in the same month. They are credited in 2004 for coming up with the idea to automate the delivery and syncing of textual content to portable audio players
  • In September 2003, Winer created a special RSS-with-enclosures feed for his colleague Christopher Lydon’s weblog, which previously only had a text-only RSS feed. When Lydon had accumulated about 25 audio interviews with bloggers, futurists, and political figures, Winer gradually released them as a new RSS feed. Winer challenged other aggregator developers to support this new form of content and provide enclosure support. 
    • Lydon’s blog eventually became Radio Open Source and is now the oldest, still-running podcast
  • Matt Schichter’s The Backstage Pass is widely believed to be the first podcast to be published online, despite lacking a commonly accepted identifying name for the medium. The chat show was launched in October 2003
  • Ben Hammersley originally suggested the word “podcast” as a portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcast” in February 2004
    • Other names in limited use include “net cast,” which is intended as a vendor-neutral term without the loose reference to the Apple iPod. Other sources have suggested “portable on demand” or “POD” for similar reasons
    • In September 2004, blogger and columnist Doc Searls began keeping track of how many “hits” Google found for the word “podcasts”. His first query reportedly returned 24 results. On September 28, there were 526 hits on Google for “podcasts”. On October 1, there were 2750 hits. The number continued to double every few days
  • In June 2005, Apple released iTunes 4.9, which added formal support for podcasts, thus negating the need to use a separate program in order to download and transfer them to a mobile device. While this made access to podcasts more convenient and widespread, it also effectively ended advancement of podcatchers by independent developers. Additionally, Apple issued cease and desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the terms “iPod” or “Pod” in their products’ names
  • In July 2005, US President George W. Bush became a podcaster of sorts when the White House website added an RSS 2.0 feed to the previously downloadable files of the president’s weekly radio addresses
  • Also in July of that year, the first People’s Choice Podcast Awards were held during Podcast Expo, with awards being given in 20 categories. The Awards are still held annually and now better known as the Podcast Awards, and the now-22 categories are the following. I also added who won for 2018:
    • People’s Choice--The Fantasy Footballers
    • Best Produced--N/A
    • Best Video Podcast--N/A
    • Best Mobile Podcast--N/A
    • Arts--We Like Drinking
    • Business--Extraordinary Women Radio
    • Comedy--2 Girls on a Bench
    • Education--Our Fake History
    • Entertainment--We’re Drunk and We Know Things
    • Food and Drink--N/A
    • Games & Hobbies--Trivial Warfare
    • General--N/A
    • LGBQ--Derek and Romaine
    • Health--A Better Night’s Sleep
    • Government & Organizations--Democracy Works
    • Kids & Family--Cool Facts About Animals
    • Mature--Turn Me On
    • Music--The Modern Vinyl Podcast
    • News & Politics--Consider This
    • Religion & Spirituality--For the Love with Jen Hatmaker
    • Science & Medicine--Curiosity Daily
    • Society-Culture--Travel Oddities
    • Sports & Recreation--The Fantasy Footballers
    • Technology--Why’d You Push That Button?
    • Travel--N/A
    • TV & Film--Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Podcast
  • This year’s award ceremony was live streamed on September 29
  • On September 28, 2005, Google found more than 100M hits on the word “podcasts”
  • In December 2005, “podcast” was named the word of the year by the New Oxford American Dictionary, and added the word to the dictionary in 2006
  • In February 2006, Lance Anderson became the first to take a podcast and create a live venue tour with his podcast The Lance Anderson Podcast Experiment
  • In 2014, This American Life launched the first season of their Serial podcast, and went on to achieve 68 million downloads by the end of Season 1 and became the first podcast to win a Peabody Award. The show is also credited with popularizing true crime podcasts. As of December 2018, Serial is the most downloaded podcast of all time, with 420 million total downloads
  • NPR is the most popular podcast publisher with 175 million downloads and streams every month. 
  • According to a Chartable blog post by Dave Zohrob published in February 2019, we are entering the “Golden Age of Podcasting.” 
    • “Podcasts have been around since at least 2004. But unlike text-based news and blogs, which have gone through waves of centralization and disruption thanks to Facebook and Google, the podcast industry has remained stubbornly decentralized. There are dozens of popular podcast players, and no single gatekeeper in the industry. Despite many attempts, there has never been a ‘Netflix of podcasts.’”
      • Spotify appears to be on an acquisition spree and will be spending hundreds of millions of dollars purchasing podcast hosting platforms, studios, and podcasts themselves.
      • The article states that “Spotify CEO Daniel Ek explicitly referenced Netflix’s strategy as part of their motivation
      • This could signal that we’re on the cusp of a Netflix-style change for podcasting, with “a marked increase in the amount and quality of original audio programming.”
    • Between 2018 and 2019, weekly and monthly listenership jumped from 15% to 23%, or 20 million more frequent listeners in the US alone
      • In total, around 60 million people are listening a few times a week or more, and 91 million people are listening at least once a week
    • In 2018, an average of 575 podcasts were started every day, or about 1 every 3 minutes. Chartable is tracking over 670K podcasts in the Apple Podcasts directory, and over 210K of those published their first episode in 2018
      • In contrast, there are 35 million YouTube channels, so there is still plenty of room for new entrants in the audio world
    • The article goes on to say that podcasting is exploding because they’re a great way to connect directly to an audience. “There’s no single gatekeeper, or gatekeeping algorithm, that will prevent you from reaching our audience.
    • Edison Research data shows that 87% of podcast listeners listen to most or all of each podcast they listen to, even despite the fact that many episodes may run for hours. This is in contrast to the way that our attention works with other media. Some sources claim that our average attention span is down to 8 seconds. The average watch time for Facebook Watch videos is around 23 seconds. A “good” YouTube consumption rate is somewhere around 50%
      • Listeners binge on podcasts the same way that they binge a new Netflix season
    • Chartable also explains why the podcasting boom is happening now, 15 years after the creation of the medium. There are several broad trends converging, starting with Spotify and   getting serious about competing with Apple, increasing their investments in podcasting in 2018.
      • Google launched a native Google Podcasts app for Android, which has the advantage of working on any Android device without requiring an app installation, meaning that hundreds of millions of Android users now have a “universal link” for podcast listening
      • While Spotify has allowed podcast listening for about three years, they didn’t open the platform to all podcasters until 2018. Spotify has significantly increased the prominence of podcasts, which is showing in their downland stats, having doubled from 2017-2018 from 4.4% to 8.5%. Most of those listeners are new to podcasts, meaning that Spotify didn’t poach listeners from other hosting platforms, but rather created new listeners simply by exposure 
    • Additionally, the prevalence of smartphones is crucial for the podcast boom, since smartphones are by far the most popular device for audio listening. Streaming media make up the majority of mobile data usage, and that share is continuing to grow
    • Another factor is connected car adoption. A quarter of all listeners do most of their listening in the car, and as more cars adopt Apple’s CarPlay and Android Auto, people are choosing to listen to podcasts or streaming services like Spotify or Apple Music rather than traditional AM/FM radio
    • Other converging trends include the popularity of smart speakers, and that generally more audio of various kinds are being more widely consumed and easily accessed, such as streaming music services, meditation apps, and audiobooks.
    • Chartable predicts that this Golden Age of Podcasts will lead to more high-quality shows, podcasts will continue to grow their share of overall attention, new models for funding the production of a show will emerge, advertisers and other funders will be able to expect more precise and transparent measure of audience engagement (other than download numbers), Spotify will create more exclusive content to aggregate and retain listeners, but Apple will maintain a strong position
    • The blog post closes out with this optimistic comparison: “Our current Golden Age of Television started 80 years after the invention of TV, and a decade after the invention of the Web. And despite some dire warnings, the trend in more and better TV programming has yet to slow. In comparison, the Golden Age of Podcasts only took 15 years since the invention of the medium, and it’s just getting started.”
• • International Podcast Day history
    • The holiday was co-founded in 2014 by a father and son team, Steve and Dave Lee. They also co-host the podcast The Waves of Tech, which was launched in March of 2007 and currently consists of nearly 500 episodes. 
    • From a 2018 article by Morgan Hines on discoverpods.com, it was seven years after they started their podcast that they had the idea to create the holiday. Steve was driving and “heard a radio commercial for National Senior Citizen Day and wondered immediately why there wasn’t a day to celebrate podcasters and podcasting.” They chose September because the first podcast was released in September 2004, and the day after their 2014 National Podcast Day event, they “heard overwhelmingly from the international podcasting community to be represented and involved--hence, the birth of International Podcast Day.”
    • From their website, internationalpodcastday.com, they describe the day a “great opportunity to connect with fellow podcasters, podcast listeners, podcast enthusiasts, and leaders in the podcasting industry.”
    • Since the inaugural holiday, Steven and Dave have featured podcasters from 55 countries. The day is comprised of several events that take place in both an official and unofficial capacity. They host a 33-hour live video stream, where podcasters present their story or topic in their own language, though the majority are presented in English. The holiday events start at 8AM on September 29 and end at 10PM on the 30th. They note that podcasters around the world also take part in their own ways, coming up with unofficial events of their own. Internationalpodcastday.com has a page listing such events, and continues to take submissions from podcasters trying to spread the word about their own. When I checked the page in mid-September, there were events listed in Poland, Paris, Germany, North Carolina, Wisconsin, India, and Brazil 
    • According to nationaldaycalendar.com, they created the holiday as a way to raise awareness of podcasting as an excellent entertainment and educational medium
  • Fun facts/stats--from weeditpodcast.com, wikipedia, podcastinsights.com, podcastprogress.com
    • Of 300K podcast listeners, 63% bought something that the host had promoted on their show. Of that same group, 71% said they had visited a sponsor’s website, while 62% said they would consider paying for the advertised product or service
    • Podcast subscriptions soared past the 1 billion mark back in 2013
    • There are 7 billion mobile devices worldwide, and 58% of Americans own a smartphone. One in four podcast consumers play their audio device in their car “nearly every day.”
    • Only 6% of all marketers are using podcasting as a form of content (2016)
    • Podcast listeners consume more than 105 minutes of audio per day than the average American. They spend more than 35% of that total audio time listening to podcasts
    • Today, there are more than 115K English-language podcasts available, and dozens of websites available for distribution for little or no cost to the producer or listener
    • According to one 2017 survey, 42M Americans above the age of 12 listen to podcast on at least a weekly basis
    • As of June 2019, there are currently over 750K podcasts, with over 30million episodes
      • A huge jump from April 2018, at which point FastCompany stated that there were “over 525K shows and over 18.5million episodes”
    • (podcastprogress.com) According to Chartable in 2018, an average of 757 podcasts were launched every day, or about one every three minutes. 
      • There is a high level of podfading--few people keep it going after a few episodes. Between 50% and 75% of podcasts end up podfading after 7 episodes
    • 51% of the US population has listened to a podcast
    • 49% of podcast listening is done at home. 22% is done in the car
    • 80% of listeners listen to all or most of each podcast episode and listens to an average of 7 shows per week
    • Listenership is split between women and men at about 44%/56%, respectively
    • 50% or over 60 million homes are podcast fans
    • 70% of the US population is familiar with the term “podcasting”--up from 64% in 2018
    • 51% of the US population has listened to a podcast--up from 44% in 2018
    • 32% (90 million) listened to a podcast in the last month
    • 22% (62 million) listen to podcasts weekly
    • 16 million people in the US are “avid podcast fans”
    • 45% of monthly podcast listeners have household income over $75K--vs 35% for the total population
    • 27% of US podcast listeners have a 4-year college degree
    • 36% of podcast listeners are non-white
    • Podcast listeners subscribe to an average of 6 shows
    • 19% of listeners increase the speed
    • 65% of monthly podcast listeners have been listening for less than 3 years
    • Comedy is the most popular podcasting genre, followed by education and news
    • Podcast listeners are much more active on every social media channel (94% are active on at least one vs 81% for the entire population)
    • Listeners are more likely to follow companies and brands on social media
    • Listeners are also more likely to subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime--meaning that they are less likely to be exposed to TV advertising
    • Listeners are more likely to own a smart speaker such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home
    • 51% of bottled water households are podcast listeners, as are
    • 57% of baby food households
    • 53% of beer households
    • 56% of juice households
    • 54% of milk households
    • 54% of cereal households
    • 69% agreed that podcast ads made them aware of new products or services
    • South Korea leads the world in the percentage of people who have listened to a podcast in the past month with 58%
    • The top five are rounded out with Spain at 40%, Sweden at 36%, Australia at 33%, and the US at 33%
    • Classes of MBA students have been commissioned to research podcasting and compare possible business models, and venture capital flowing to influential content providers
    • Podsafe music refers to tracks, by independent as well as signed acts, that are available for use on podcasts without significant cost or licensing difficulty
    • Podnography is also becoming a thing. Also called sexcasts, these are audio clips that may contain porn reviews, kinky storytelling, and interviews with porn writers

 

• Activities to celebrate

 

• • Use #InternationalPodcastDay and #PodCastDay to share on social media
  • Visit internationalpodcastday.com, who suggests that you can celebrate by spreading the word about the day to your friends, share the celebration on your podcasts and social media feeds
    • Grab your mic and camera, ask someone about their favorite podcast. Share the response on social media
    • Join in events in your region and around the world
    • Promote by posting the official banner image on your website 
    • Play the International Podcast Day audio or video promo on your show
    • Change your social media image to the International Podcast Day logo
    • Explain to someone what a podcast is and get them hooked
    • Share your favorite podcast with someone
    • Send feedback to your favorite podcasters and tell them thank you
    • Provide a rating and review in Apple podcasts and other platforms
    • Subscribe to a new show and talk about it using one of the hashtags
    • Not a podcaster? Become one!
    • Internationalpodcastday.com also has merch for sale, including shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, and tote bags. If you order a shirt, you can send a selfie of yourself wearing it that the site will display on their Podcast Day Proud page
    • They also have a podcasting quiz, where you can test your knowledge about podcasting. I got 7/11 right, or 63.63%, or a solid D
  • National Today suggests
    • Finding a new podcast: “With apps like Pocket Cast (for Android) and Downcast (for IOS), it’s never been easier to find an interesting podcast. Browse by category, or by popularity, and you’re bound to find at least a dozen that you’ll have a hard time turning off
    • Creating your own: “You can create your very own podcast, and you’ve likely already got the tools you need to get started. Between your mobile phone and your computer, you’ve likely got a microphone, and some app like Garageband or Audacity.  Recording the podcast is the easy part--the real challenge comes when you’re trying to pick a topic worth listening to!”
    • Donating to your favorite podcaster: “Many of the most popular podcasts survive on minimal ad revenue and donations ‘from viewers like you.’ As much as even hearing those words can put one to sleep, they’re there for a reason! Consider throwing a few dollars toward your favorite podcasts so that they can keep on broadcasting.”

SOURCES

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_podcasting
• https://internationalpodcastday.com/podcasting-history/
• https://internationalpodcastday.com/promotion/
• https://internationalpodcastday.com/
• https://nationaldaycalendar.com/international-podcast-day-september-30/
• https://nationaltoday.com/international-podcast-day/
• https://discoverpods.com/founding-creation-international-podcast-day/
• https://www.weeditpodcasts.com/14-podcasting-facts-that-will-blow-your-mind/
• https://www.podcastinsights.com/podcast-statistics/
• https://podcastprogress.com/podcast-facts-and-figures-2019/
• https://musicoomph.com/podcast-statistics/
• https://chartable.com/blog/golden-age-of-podcasts
• https://musicoomph.com/podcast-statistics/