In August last year, Dave Winer and Adam Curry launched ‘iPodder‘ – the software that spawned what is now being called the ‘Podcast Revolution‘. Three weeks later, I was on a plane to Birmingham to take up a lecturing post which would quickly evolve into what you might call a position in ‘iPod Studies’.

It’s a fast-moving field. Podcasting simply did not exist this time last year, and now, it’s a global phenomenon. Over five million hits for the word ‘podcast‘ in Google.

Dawn and Drew, the net’s most listened-to couple, regularly pull in audience figures that most metropolitan radio hosts would envy.

Paris Hilton’s got her own podcast these days.

Sirius, the US digital satellite audio broadcaster have employed Curry to host a show in which he just plays podcasts.

And now there’s an all-podcasts, all-the time radio station.

For many readers of The Wireless, the idea of podcasting will be very familiar. But just to bring you up to speed, here’s the gist:

iPod+Broadcast.
A podcast is an audio programme, delivered to you over the internet. You subscribe to it using a piece of software – a ‘podcatcher’ – and when the next instalment of that programme is ready, your podcatcher downloads it, and (usually) transfers it to your portable digital audio player.

A more thorough and technically accurate definition can be found here.

This phenomenon of amateur and usually homemade audio programming, distributed over the internet, has monopolised my attention for the past few months. It’s been a fascinating journey, and it’s long past time I contributed some notes from the field.

In the rapid trajectory of this new medium, there has been, in the past 24 hours or so, a distinctive break. Pioneer podcaster Curry has announced the details of his new commercial venture, Podshow.com.

It’s important to note that nobody is surprised by this. Although the details have been shrouded in secrecy, Podshow itself has been promised for months, and it’s just what Curry does, that whole crest-of-the-wave commercialisation thing.

Conceptualising the podcast
As a radio producer and presenter, it’s been quite hard for me to make the conceptual leap to podcasting, and I’d be first to admit I got it entirely wrong for several months.

The re-versioned jazz show I put up online drew some really nice compliments, but entirely missed the point. Likewise, the jazz show I’m supposed to be doing for The Podcast Network is way behind schedule – partly because of time pressures on my part, but mostly because I suspect that it’s actually just not any good from the point of view of the medium itself.

So far, Dubber and Spoons Take The Bus, an experiment in content that was supposed to just give us something to play with while we messed about with streaming, downloading and distribution technologies, turns out to have been the biggest success of the lot – not simply in terms of numbers of listeners, but also from the point of view of getting my head around the medium itself.

But I need to work through these things out loud. How can I know if I get it until I try it? How can I know what I think until I overhear myself saying it?

In my past few months examining online music, podcasting and the portable digital music phenomenon, I’ve noticed some things, and I have some ideas I’d like to try out.

But it’s all moving very fast, so I’m going to have to catch up here on the Wireless. The beta launch of the Open Media Network last week represents a significant development easily as important as the PodShow announcement. Ourmedia.org too, is potentially revolutionary.

There’s so much to talk about, and it changes things. The title of this post refers to a work in progress for a new media conference in Amsterdam later in the year, and so I’ll be trying out some of those ideas in public as well. It refers to the personalisation of media consumption as well as the shift of broadcasting power from the corporate to the individual.

Beware of simplicity
Of course, podcasting is neither a liberating and democratising cure-all nor a harbinger of doom for radio or any other industry. Automatically distrust anyone who tells you otherwise.

If anyone asks you what the impact of podcasting will be, the only possible correct answer begins “Well, it’s complicated…”.

And because it’s complicated, it’s interesting – so be warned: after a bit of an absence resulting from the strain of keeping the Wireless at least partially separate from where my brain has been completely immersed recently, I’ve decided to give up and just go with it.

The old radio stuff will still pop up, as will the usual inconsequential nonsense about my private life… but the general discussion will be podcast-centric. As a result, there’ll be inexcusable geekery – as well as unbridled enthusiasm for new ideas that will turn out to be complete embarrassments within a matter of days.

And there’ll be audio. What the hell.

Podcast your way to riches
The good news is that along the way, I’ve figured out at least two ways to become inordinately wealthy from podcasting.

I also fully expect to come up with a couple more that nobody’s thought of yet. Stick around, and I’ll tell you how to do it.

I’m too damn busy, so just give me 20% or something if you make a go of it…