14 DAY TRIAL // The majority of users know that for downloading music over the Internet, they can turn to legal or illegal download services. In time, legal downloading services have extended their downloading content and have started to offer other types of audio content, like books or presentation manuals.
iPod and MP3 Player users have now another source of audio content. The term podcasting refers to the distribution of audio content through the Internet for iPod or other MP3 players. A user saves an audio file in MP3 format, which he sends to a site supporting podcasting, such as podcasting.net and ipodder.org. Here, the MP3 is given its own URL and will be integrated in a RSS feed; in this way, it can be listened by other users in the same manner RSS news are distributed.
Regarded as an audio equivalent of blogs, podcasting is considered by musicians and other audio content suppliers a distribution channel for a wider audience. For now, podcasting refers only to audio content, but the technology can also be used for image, video and text files.
If until now podcasting was regarded as something strange, dedicated to the world of weblogs, things might change especially since figures recently published by Pew Internet & American Life Project point out that there are 6 million users who downloaded at least once a podcast.
The study was carried out during 21 February and 21 March, when 2021 users have been interviewed. The company has found out that 29% of the users use podcasting. Considering that in the United States a percentage of 11 to 15% of the population owns a MP3 player, it results that 6 million Americans are podcasting users.
It is difficult to tell how accurate are the figures, but what is certain is that podcasting has become important enough so that big companies like ZDNet or NPR (National Public Radio) are taking into consideration the possibility of distributing audio content in this way.