aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Apple makes podcasting mainstream

So says the Times:

So far, Apple has worked this kind of magic on digital video editing, wireless networking, online music selling, R.S.S. feeds (a kind of Web site subscription) and other technologies. Its latest attempt, however, will be music to an awful lot of ears. With its release of the free iTunes 4.9 software for Mac and Windows, Apple has just mainstreamed podcasting.

No David Coursey, the Times isn’t part of a tired technology press hungry for the next big thing. Apple says that within 48 hours of its release, Pod people had subscribed to more than a million podcasts. Something real is happening here.

The big question is, why is Apple working so hard to claim the podcast phenomenon as its own? After all, the company doesn’t make any money when you listen to or subscribe to a podcast. The Price column in iTunes says Free for every single podcast, and Apple says it has no intention of changing that.

Clearly, the motivation behind Apple’s podcasting program is selling more iPods. You can certainly get podcasts onto other music players, but not with the effortless, automated flow of the iTunes-iPod system.

In other words, these free podcasts are just another feather in the iPod’s cap. As an editorial at daringfireball.net astutely observed, Apple is flipping the traditional business plan on its head. It’s giving away the razor blades, but selling a staggering number of razors.

Those razors play iMusic and the iMusic Store is where you go to subscribe to podcasts. They’re not just selling razors, they’re selling blades. The free offer that gets folks in your store is as tried and true as they come. I’m just glad it’s podcasts.

The new iTunes makes my job easy. I can focus more on the content. We start our campus podcasts in September.