Getting Inside the Listener Experience


Even though your focus in reading this book is on producing your own podcast, there are two important reasons why the best place to begin is to become familiar with what it's like to be a podcast consumer, or listener. The first is simply that listening to podcasts is very, very cool and we guarantee you'll enjoy it. The second, more important reason is that you cannot be a great podcasteror, probably, even a very good oneif you aren't intimately familiar with every facet of your listeners' experience.

As radio guru Walter Sabo notes, each medium "has its own physics." To understand this better, consider the differences between movies and television. On the surface, they appear to be very similarthey both involve images that are viewed on a screen, for examplebut that similarity only exists up to a point.

Movies are good at large, panoramic shots. Think of the battlefield scenes in Star Wars, for example. They lose their impact dramatically when they're taken off the large screen and scaled down for television. Television, on the other hand, can create a "cozy" environment with programs such as Oprah in a way that's impossible to achieve in a movie theater.

In much the same way, podcasts seem very similar to radio broadcasts. After all, they're both technologies that involve the dissemination of talk, music, and other audio content. A closer look at the way these two technologies work, however, reveals some important differences. If you're going to be successful as a podcaster, it's important that you understand these differences clearly.

Listening to podcasts is, unfortunately, a little more involved than just turning on the radio. That will certainly be changing rapidly as the software environment gets better and the infrastructure evolves. Right now, though, there are three steps your listeners need to take in order to listen to your podcasts. Your first important task as a budding podcaster, then, is to become a proficient podcast consumer by undertaking those same steps yourself. The three steps are discussed in the following sections.

Download and Install "Pod-catching" Software

It's certainly possible to scour the web for podcasts that might be interesting to you. Then, when you find one, you could go that podcast's website periodically to see if there's a new show. And, finally, when there is a new show, you could download it manually. All of that is possible, but it's quite labor intensive and very time consuming. If you had to go through that whole process every time you wanted to listen to a podcast, chances are you wouldn't end up doing very much listening.

The solution to this problem comes in the form of software that's specifically designed to help you find and download podcasts. Technically, the software packages that perform these functions are specialized RSS readers, but we're going to use the more popular designation and refer to them as "pod-catching" software. (Don't worry about the term RSS right now. We'll be exploring it in depth later on in the book.) By far, the most popular of these dedicated packages is called iPodder. (Of course, iTunes now has podcasting features, too. More about that in Appendix D.)

Point your browser to ipodder.org. From there, find the link that says Download iPodder. This link will take you to a screen (shown in Figure 1.1) that allows you to select the iPodder software designed for your computer's operating system.

Figure 1.1. iPodder.org provides "pod-catching" software for a variety of operating systems.


Currently, you can download iPodder software for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux computers as well as Pocket PC devices and SmartPhones.

Just select the appropriate folder and download the software that's right for your computer. Once you've downloaded the software, follow the onscreen instructions to install it on your computer.

Your iPodder software performs all of the tasks associated with listening to podcasts that we identified a moment ago.

Find the Podcasts You Want and Subscribe to Them

iPodder software works with a podcast directory system that's maintained by volunteers. It's organized by category, as you can see in Figure 1.2. There are dozens of categories available and there are quite a few options in each category.

Figure 1.2. No matter what you're looking for, there's probably a category in the iPodder directory system that meets your needs perfectly.


You can also get a directory listing, of the most popular podcasts or a listing of the podcasts that represent the top choices of the iPodder directory editors. While iPodder will allow you to add podcasts that you've found on the Web that aren't listed in its directory, chances are that the iPodder directory will provide all of the podcast browsing options you want.

Once you've found a podcast that looks interesting, you can then subscribe to it by clicking on the plus sign at the left of the podcast's listing. In Figure 1.1, the podcasts that have been added as subscriptions appear in the column on the left.

When you add a podcast subscription, you are given the option of downloading all available files, the first three files, or only the most recent file. You can also choose whether to save the file in MP3 format or, if you're using iTunes to manage your music files, you can convert each podcast to Apple's AAC file format. (You can instruct iPodder to move your files directly into iTunes if you want, or you can instruct the software to save them at a specified location on your hard drive.) Converting your downloaded podcasts to AAC creates a larger file. An important benefit of the AAC format, however, is that your podcast becomes "bookmarkable," so that if you leave your podcast before you're through listening to it, you can return to where you stopped listening rather than starting over again from the beginning of the file.

Once you've subscribed to one or more podcasts, you have a couple of options for downloading the podcast files. One option is to open iPodder and download any available new podcasts by clicking the Check Now button. The second option, however, is the one that most people select. In the software's Preferences settings, you can tell iPodder to check for and download new shows automatically, as shown in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3. Selecting Auto Check tells iPodder to automatically find and download new shows for the podcasts you've subscribed to.


When you tell iPodder to Auto Check, the podcasts you want will automatically be downloaded to your computer. Once the podcasts you want to hear are on your hard drive, they can also be automatically synchronized with your portable music device. This can be your portable music player (an iPod, for example), a Pocket PC or other PDA-type device, or a Smart Phone.

Listen to Your Podcasts in "The Real World"

Of course, listening to the podcasts you've subscribed to would seem to go without saying. The important part of this step for you as a podcaster, though, is the part about listening in "the real world." An enormous mistake that many potential podcasters make is to only listen to podcasts in an office or studio environment. You'll be better prepared to create terrific podcasts if you spend some time listening to podcasts in listening environments that are like the ones from which your audience is likely to listen.

Listen to your favorite podcasts in your car on the way to work or while you're out doing errands. Listen to them while you're exercising. (If you don't already exercise regularly, here's another good reason to get started!) Listen to them while you're out shopping or in line at the post office. (You can save the longer podcasts for when you're waiting in line at the post office. They'll come in handy.)

Listening to podcasts out in "the real world" will teach you some lessons that will come in handy when you begin creating your own podcasts. You'll get a feel for how background noise in the listening environment changes the listening experience. You'll also have a chance to start to start thinking about what it takes to hold your listeners' attention. Did you find your attention drifting as you listened to a particular podcast? If you did, what was happening on the showor not happening on the showwhen it lost you?

Following these three steps will be entertaining but it will also be enlightening. It will turn you into a connoisseur of podcasts and a real student of the medium. You should think of this process as Podcasting 101. It will provide a foundation for your podcasting success.



Absolute Beginner's Guide to Podcasting
Absolute Beginners Guide to Podcasting.
ISBN: B001U8C03Q
EAN: N/A
Year: 2004
Pages: 167

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