The Ghost of Podcast Past (2024 Edition)
Earlier this month, I had a great idea.
My 7-year-old has been really into music lately, but she has an iPad, which isn’t very portable. And if I get my way, she won’t have a phone until she’s at least 27. So I thought I’d get her an iPod.
But to my shock and disbelief, the iPod in all of its forms was discontinued in 2022. I was shocked for 2 reasons:
I consume a lot of tech content, and surely, I learned this fact but forgot it.
The iPod was so good — and feels like a perfect portable companion for kids. Better than an Apple Watch, anyway.
So alas, I either need to get her some random portable player, or hope she’s cool with connecting her iPad to a bluetooth speaker for a bit longer.
Last year, I ended Podcast Advent with a theme borrowed from A Christmas Carol, looking at the ghosts of Podcast Past, Present, and Future. I’d like to revisit those topics, this time speaking more generally than I did last year.
In 2023’s Ghost of Podcast Past article, I did a retrospective on How I Built It — unknowingly making it a bit of a eulogy, as the show changed to Streamlined Solopreneur a few months later.
This year, I’d like to take a broader view of podcasting’s past.
What is a “Podcast?”
If you don’t know, the term “podcast” is a portmanteau of the words “iPod” and “Broadcast.”1
The name isn’t quite fully aligned with the actual history, though. Podcasts have been distributed via RSS since the early 2000s, with the concept first surfacing in October 2000 — before the iPod even existed.
Podcasts didn’t get support in iTunes until 2005.
But as iPods were the most popular portable audio players, a lot of audio was consumed on iPods.
So the name stuck, after it was (ostensibly) coined by Ben Hammersley in an article he wrote for The Guardian in 2004.
And since we didn’t have the blazing fast internet we have now (at least in the USA), sending audio files made more sense.
Heck, YouTube didn’t even exist until 2005.
Today, of course, statistically 0% of listeners use an iPod to listen to podcasts. The name is a remnant of what podcasts originally were: broadcasts one could listen to on an iPod.
But this has lead to an ongoing discussion of exactly what a “podcast” is. If we look to the past, we see 3 components:
RSS feeds
iPod + Broadcast
Audio-only
iPods are out.
For the sake of the medium, RSS feeds most remain in. Podcasting is where it is because it’s openly distributed — much like blogs.
But what about that last one — audio-only? Was audio simply a constraint of the time?
After all, iPods eventually got video. Yet, to my knowledge, there’s no plan to add a video tag for podcasting to RSS feeds.
There were, and still are, plenty of benefits to audio-only content. Just like there are plenty of benefits to video content.
The point of the Ghost of Christmas Past in A Christmas Carol is to remind us of what came before; to understand and learn from it.
It symbolizes self-awareness. In podcasting that self-awareness can help us realize that RSS is important to podcasting’s survival — but it can also remind us that being ardently against video could hurt us in the long run.
The Past’s Effect on Format and Content.
Understanding Podcast’s Past could also help us improve the format and content of our show.
We Used to Not Have to Edit
It used to be that you could basically just record your thoughts, release them with little to no editing, and get people to listen. There was a big first-mover advantage here because when there’s not a lot to listen to, you listen to what’s available — but you also recommend the same thing to more people.
The idea of “recording and releasing” was fine because podcast listeners were clamoring for content.
Now, listeners expect more — and have more options when the quality of a show is low.
Interviews aren’t the Only Format
The more recent past has seen a boom in interviews. As technology — mics, recording software, internet connections — got better, interview shows seemed to become the vast majority of podcasts out there.
When I asked ChatGPT why interviews are so popular for podcasters, it gave me 10 reasons, and some of them were pretty good. But if I had to choose, I’d say these 2 take the cake:
Perceived Growth
Easier to Create
For a long time, podcasters figured if they have guests on, the guests will share the interview. But that didn’t pan out.
They also felt that with a guest, you don’t have to prepare as much. You could just have (shudder) a casual conversation.
And you could…for a while. But things change.
Combine interviews with record and release, and you get a lot of subpar content. Meandering interviews of varying audio levels, interruptions by barking dogs, and no clear purpose to the content.
When you have millions (by some estimates, 178 million) of podcast episodes published in a year, a lot of it will probably be subpar. But that also means making some basic changes will help you stand out.
Can Reviewing the Past Make for a Better Future?
Just because we’ve done something for a long time, doesn’t mean it’s right, or that we should keep doing it.
I’m not saying interviews are the wrong format. I’ll still have some in 2025. Likewise, I’m not saying audio-only is bad. But video might help2
If you look to the past to see why things are the way they are, you may come to the conclusion it’s time for a change.
And that change could save your podcast in the future.
As far as I can tell, this is not apocryphal
I am, however, saying record and release is bad. Edit your show.