The Podcasting Ecosystem

Essentially audio blogs, taking advantage of the freedom of speech, early podcasts were chatty, amateur products, until some heavyweights joined the bandwagon, like MTV VJs, journalists and talk-radio personalities.

This was fueled by the fact that the old public radio medium had certain creative limitations along with rules and regulations that were not a problem in the world of podcasting.

• A podcast by This American Life, called Serial became a pop culture phenomenon in 2014 and provided a ‘breakout’ moment for the medium, which had already gained a sticky audience over the years.
• This resulted in many new podcasts from established media houses and amateur creators starting to pop up.
• Ad revenue of podcasts has steadily increased, and a 2021 projection puts it at $1 Billion.

• In the summer of 2004, Adam Curry decided to program and develop the first podcatcher application using Apple scripts. The program was able to read through the RSS and download the audio. It would use the iTunes API to add the files to the playlist.
• George W. Bush became the first President of America to create a podcast when the RSS 2.0 feed was uploaded on the White House website.
• As more people became aware of the meaning of podcasting, the numbers continued to grow. In 2015, there were 100,000,000 searches from people across the globe.
• One year after the founding of the first podcast directory, Apple joined the ranks by setting up its directory to iTunes. Steve Jobs referenced podcasts to becoming the future of audio.
• The entry of Apple into the market increased the accessibility of podcasts all over the world.