WNYC in New York City is one of the first American radio stations to participate in the relatively new technological movement called podcasting.
Podcasting brings news and talk radio to an mp3 player.
“People definitely like the shorthand of ‘TiVo for the radio,’†said Mikel Ellcessor, WNYC’s director of programming. “It’s the chance to have radio when you want it, especially when you’re stuck in the subway or at the Laundromat or walking the dog. You can have the exact radio show you want when you want it.â€Â
The BBC is also podcasting. Lemme tell you, I think podcasting will be huge.
One thing though, with large podcast files being sent in massive quantities, many more hosting companies will need to appear to handle the downloading for podcasters. Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code podcast has 50,000 listeners. Each of his daily podcast files is about 17 MB. If only 10,000 actually download the file each day from him (then, say, send it to friends) that’s a mindnumbing 170 GB of data transfer daily, which is way way more than most websites could handle without melting down. He hosts his files on mac.com, and I’m sure pays serious money for that kind of bandwidth.
Audio and video hosting services. If podcasting gets huge, so will they. I know of two, Streamload.com and Filehosting.com. Anyone know of others?
Update: Globat offers web hosting with an incredible 75 GB a month data transfer for $7.95 a month. Thanks to PodcastTools for the info!