Listen To Podcasts On Any Phone

November 12th, 2006 at 12:20 am

i just figure walking around the street and finding someone really engaged on his cell phone, then you ask “dude, who’re you talking to?” and the guy answers “no one, I am listening to a podcast!”

November 12th, 2006 at 1:18 am

I bet some people will use this service but they must be very addicted to the pod-cast.
The sound quality of a phone-call is very bad - that makes it useless for music imho.
If you don’t have ear-buds you get to hold the phone to your head all the time. So better don’t listen to a pod-cast while driving your car or you’ll get a ticket (at least here in Austria).
Also its clearly not the cheapest way to listen to a pod-cast. I don’t know what the prices in the states are, but here you are charged at least a couple cents per minute.

November 12th, 2006 at 2:38 am

If I’m really that interested in a podcast, I’d rather download to my ipod or get the mp3 onto my mobile. Better yet use melodeo.

November 12th, 2006 at 6:33 am

I really like the idea. Like Mike said, it turns every phone into a podcast player and the advantage is that it doesn’t require any prior preparation (downloading podcasts to your iPod in order to listen to them later).

A friend of mine came up with the same idea some time ago and set up a German service at http://www.phonecaster.de. If you have a flatrate for your mobile, which is getting increasingly popular in Germany, it won’t cost you a cent to listen to podcasts on the road.

November 12th, 2006 at 8:08 am

Interesting to see the innovation taking place merging cell phones and syndication. They really could take the process a step further to simplify the process for the consumer. Dialing or remembering all those numbers is inconvenient. I propose the use of SMS technology and utilizing existing voicemail infrastructure.

For example, if I wanted to hear the latest techcrunch podcast I would simply send the text msg “techcrunch” to a specific phone number. That podcast would be added to a pre-existing “podcast mail” account where I could dial in and listen at my leisure.

Thoughts?

November 12th, 2006 at 9:29 am

really a small market, but honestly, i could imagine doing this for breaking and major news recaps from major media firms like cnn, that would be nice - i hear in some coffee shop that some huge thing just went down, then since i’m nowhere near a radio or tv or whatever (and since tv on the phone is slow) i just dial into cnn and get the breaking news, same for a market recap (daily) that i might put on speaker phone on a drive home versus scanning the radio and coming in partway through…but they’ll need some kind of screening and channel management…i see no value for generic podcasts, just major news…

November 12th, 2006 at 10:48 am

I just can’t get into podcasts that much … I enjoy reading the transcripts, but listening to the whole thing is always somewhat painful (which is the same reason I don’t watch much TV news … reading it online is just so much faster).

November 12th, 2006 at 11:55 am

It’s a really cool concept. I don’t know that I would really want to listen to a podcast over my phone though, but I like what Fred points out. Definitely could be a good tool for business podcasts.

November 12th, 2006 at 12:48 pm

HTTP://POD2MOB.COM

November 12th, 2006 at 1:42 pm

Calling a phone number for each individual podcast? This would not be fun to browse… try Mobilcast powered by Melodeo.com

November 12th, 2006 at 3:14 pm

Worst.
Web 2.0 idea.
Ever.

Seriously, this one is REALLY bad.

November 12th, 2006 at 4:54 pm

Provided that a person has a flat rate for minutes and they can plug their phone into the car stereo, this is a great solution for a mobile sales force to listen to sales info like training, market updates, vendor/competitor analysis, etc.

On the consumer side, don’t underestimate usage by a the younger generation of mobile phone users who always seem to want to be “connected”. Getting audio podcasts from a growing number of media channels seems very viable to me. If someone is sitting on a 40 minute commute on a bus or train to and from work, I could see them using portions of that time to listen to podcasts related to personal interets such as finance, health, entertainment, sports (like customized Fantasy Football updates), hobbies, etc, etc.

Lastly, I don’t think these new services will be just devoted to audio podcasts. I think video is the golden goose. Then the one touch dialing to the advertiser makes a ton of sense straight from a pre-roll before a video podcast.

November 12th, 2006 at 5:42 pm

How will this stand up to the competition from the iPhone? I understand Apple and SoftBank will release a cell phone next year, starting in Japan.

Drama 2.0: Whatever happened to the Dead20.com site? It’s been down for quite some time now.

November 12th, 2006 at 7:08 pm

Todd, I agree your podcast idea for business, and I have such plan:)
for these 2 sites, I have one question:
when I am listening to a podcast, if my friend or boss call my number, will I miss many calls or podcast service providers will automaticly stop listening and connect with incoming call??

November 12th, 2006 at 7:31 pm

I agree it’d be good for business. I think more people have cell phones than iPods - it’s smart to go this route.

November 12th, 2006 at 8:10 pm

This won’t fly for one reason: they gotta make money, and to make money, they’ll either be monetizing other publisher’s podcasts, or charging a fee.

If the latter, it’s likely DOA, particularly once people figure out how easy it is to sideload.

If it’s the former, I imagine the c&d letters are being primed. I doubt major publishers who are looking for ways to monetize their own content will let someone suck it up, add gateways and redistribute it. No publisher lets people do that with RSS feeds - why would they let people do it with podcasts? Free for non-commercial use - otherwise, call us for a licensing talk.

November 12th, 2006 at 8:47 pm

Jughead: You are absolutely right that if I’m sitting a 40 minute commute on a bus or train to and from work, I might want to listen to a podcast. The point you and others here seem to be missing is that in these situations, the cell phone is a much less appealing, and completely unnecessary, tool for listening to the podcast. A device like an iPod is ideally suited to this whereas a cell phone is not (it could be quite expensive depending on your mobile plan, you could face reception issues, you might miss incoming calls, etc.). So the question becomes why you would opt to use an inferior product to perform a task when a superior product is already available to you. If you are part of the 1% of American households that listen to podcasts, you almost surely already have an iPod or MP3 player and do not need to use a phone to listen. In fact, a Nielsen/NetRatings report in July indicates that most podcast listeners are Apple users (hence the “pod” in podcasting).

Again, this doesn’t mean that there is absolutely no use for these services, but if you evaluate these services with the same criteria an investor uses, they fail miserably on the following points:

- These services don’t address a major problem with significant pain.
- The market opportunity looks extremely limited, both in audience and revenue potential. Some research firms project a large market for podcasting, but thus far it’s a niche and monetization on a large scale is unproven. These services are at best targeting a small subset of a podcasting market that has yet to achieve its potential and at worst are trying to create a market within it that will never develop.
- From what I can see, there is absolutely no innovative or defensible technology. The fact that a number of services are already doing essentially the same thing and others look to be working on similar solutions does not bode well, especially when the size of the market they’re all competing for may be extremely small. These services look more like features, not viable standalone businesses.

In terms of listening to things like earnings reports, these are already done over the phone and you can call in to listen to archived reports. As such, this market is already being served quite well. For those that have mentioned the increasing use of mobile phones for content consumption, you need to realize that these services are not really tapping into this market. Dave mentioned how it would be useful to hear recaps of breaking news, for instance. Media companies, like CNN, have already, or can be expected to, cut deals with carriers and mobile content distributors to syndicate their content to mobile subscribers. For instance, it won’t be long before I can be alerted on my mobile phone, in a push fashion, to a breaking news story that meets specific criteria I’ve set, and given the opportunity to watch the CNN broadcast about it directly on my mobile phone. While many question whether markets like mobile video will ever materialize at the level some research firms have projected, it’s clear that the scenario I just laid out is far superior to the scenario Dave presented because in Dave’s scenario, you have to hear about the breaking news via somebody in the coffee shop and then dial into a podcast number, whereas advanced mobile technology will not only provide the actual alert that something has happened, but provides delivery of richer content about it much more easily and in a friendlier fashion.

Since some people are coming up with ideas of what potential groups might find this useful (even though they probably aren’t part of these groups), is it wrong to ask how many of the people that think this is a good idea have tried using one of these services and are seriously going to use it regularly? Next time you see somebody listening to their iPod (or another MP3 player), ask them what they’re listening to and see how many are actually listening to a podcast. Of the ones that are, ask them if they’d have any need or desire to listen to the podcast on their cell phone instead. It would also be interesting to have these services release metrics on the total number of calls they handle but somehow I suspect that this information won’t be forthcoming.

November 13th, 2006 at 12:06 am

Jughead: Good post. As you note, the iPhone would combine the cell phone with the iPod. This is probably a smart move but let’s be clear that listening to podcasts is best done on an iPod, not on a cell phone. Fonpod’s ad here on TechCrunch says “Turn your cellphone into an iPod.” The question you have to ask is: why? You’re still left with two devices that you have to lug around. As you agree, at some point sooner than later, these devices will probably be merged into an iPhone and the only companies that can do this are those that can make the actual device (Apple, Nokia, etc.). Fonpod is a non-starter as a solution because I am unable to throw away one of the devices (all of my iTunes music is on my iPod so I still have to carry my iPod around even if I listen to my podcasts using their service).

I think you misunderstood my comment about these services not providing a solution to a problem that causes significant pain. I was not referring to the entire podcasting market - I was referring to the podcast via phone market. There is absolutely no doubt that podcasting is extremely useful, primarily for time-shifting the quality, professional content you refer to. The ability to listen to these podcasts via phone is not extremely useful. As such, I’m calling services like Fonpods dead on arrival.

If you want to talk about the podcasting market as a whole, I personally believe it will be used by mainstream consumers primarily for time-shifting content that is being produced for and used in other mediums. It’s extremely easy for producers of mass market content, like NPR, The Wall Street Journal, etc. to take their existing content and make it available as podcast content. Many are already doing so. There’s no reason they shouldn’t do it because the cost of doing so is almost non-existent. What I am most skeptical about is the idea that user-generated podcasts will take off in a huge way. Obviously you will have some podcasts that become very popular and might be monetizable, but those will be the exceptions, not the rule. Look at how many blogs are out there. Only a very small portion make any money of note and most go practically unread entirely. I think the idea that you’re going to have legions of people sitting in their bedrooms in pajamas starting popular podcasts that gain mass followings and make them a ton of money is crazy. From Forrester’s Charlene Li:

“Our survey showed that only 1% of online households in North America regularly download and listen to podcasts. And when you include all of the people who are just interested or have used podcasts, they strongly favor listening to existing content like Internet radio or broadcast radio, not necessarily new content. (And for newspapers thinking about podcasting, putting print stories into audio format just ranked ahead of original content from bloggers) I think this has something to do with 1) original content just isn’t as well known; and 2) existing content benefits from users that simply want to time shift it.”

So if and when podcasting gains mainstream adoption, the most likely outcome will be that content produced by big media is the most widely consumed. I’m sure the people in the Web 2.0 crowd who feel that big media is dying will disagree but all the surveys so far seem to indicate that the average consumer’s interest in podcasting is for the time-shifting of mainstream content, not for listening to Dick and Jane in Kalamazoo. The broader implication of this apparent fact is that a lot of the podcasting startups will likely fall by the wayside. Given how simple podcasting is (at its core it’s just a downloadable MP3) one needs to ask what value all the podcast platforms, directories, etc. offer. User-generated content probably won’t be a big moneymaker and the big media companies certainly don’t need assistance with technology and distribution from podcast startups. They already have the content and direct access to the consumers. If they do outsource podcast-related services to some of these startups, for whatever reason, the technology is so simple and commoditized that the pricing will be driven down.

A good example some of these thoughts applied in the real world can be seen with a startup that I actually think has an interesting model: Podango. Their model is described at http://www.podango.com/learn-m.....rector.php. On the surface it seems like a decent model, but if I am capable of recruiting podcasters, building a large audience and selling ads/sponsorships, what do I need them for? Setting up a “station” without their platform is dirt easy, so the value proposition of working with some of these companies that basically want to serve as middlemen is very, very minimal.

So while there may be a freakin’ bonaza waiting to happen with online content (audio and video), unfortunately the companies that are going to reap the rewards will primarily be media companies and those that have media connections and money. At the end of the day, this opportunity is more about the media business than it is about the technology business.

November 13th, 2006 at 6:55 am

One thing is for sure. If any of these ideas are going work we’ll need to see a serious improvement in battery life for cell phones.

November 13th, 2006 at 9:02 am

Good discussions here. Last points:

Anthony: The 10%/80% figures you give are irrelevant when you consider that only 1% of US households listen to podcasts. Clearly, the people that are “geeky” enough to listen to podcasts are probably amongst the 10% that have an iPod (or MP3 player). The Nielsen/NetRatings data seems to validate this.

Jughead: There are certainly niches that are not going to be served by big media, but just remember that one of the main reasons they’re not served by big media is that the size of the audience is not big enough to create significant returns, as you already seem to recognize. While there may be niche advertisers that would drool over these listeners, the big advertisers that have a lot to spend are looking for big numbers, because it takes big returns from ad campaigns to impact the bottom line.

We may very well see individuals and companies pop up to serve these niche subjects but I think you underestimate the barriers to entry. There is little barrier to entry to produce a podcast around yoga, for instance, but there are barriers to entry to produce a quality podcast around yoga. The person or company running the podcast has to find somebody that is extremely knowledgable about the subject to commit time to doing the podcast. That person has to have a good voice and personality (ever try listening to a podcast by somebody with a bad voice and dull personality?). Compelling content for the podcast has to be written/produced on a regular basis. An audience has to be acquired, which can be costly if you don’t own a website that already has an audience. And finally, somebody has to target advertisers and close ad deals. When you consider this, the opportunity is a lot less appealing. The best candidates for taking this on are existing websites built around these niches that already have an audience. This drops the cost of listener acquisition considerably and the podcast serves as a source of incremental revenue (hopefully you can sell podcast advertising as part of your existing ad sales efforts). But again, let’s remember that a lot of these very niche websites are run by people that have day jobs or that only make enough to have a decent small business. Podcasting becomes a component of their business, not a standalone venture. Podcasting isn’t very likely to make them millions of dollars, so the opportunity from the standpoint of an entrepreneur or investor is not as significant. If you want to create an online business around organic foods, for instance, it makes sense to provide a variety of content, not just podcasts.

A company that can find a way to create some economy of scale by serving multiple niches, using a single ad sales team, etc. might be able to build a nice business but it’s not going to be easy nor cheap because while the cost of producing quality content has gotten lower, it’s still not zero and the ancillary costs of building an audience and selling advertising are typically underestimated.

November 13th, 2006 at 10:19 am

Drama,

Points well taken. Time and energy from a niche podcaster are critical in the early stages to get an audience in an exponentially growing competitive environment. However, people and small businesses have to start somewhere and podcasts plug you into a global audience immediately. Getting ears and eyeballs won’t just happen as you point out because of the need to market (which isn’t cheap) but (persistant) people always seem to find a way and reaching your niche audience through targeted web communities is making it easier to gain a following.

But I never said it would be easy.

I guess in the future I see smaller podcast content producers perhaps banding together to form their own communities with a very targeted audience. This would provide the podcasters with the ability to offer other things like articles, blogs and more social networking features (as you mentioned) while leveraging the draw of a narrowly focused content community.

This in turn could capture the attention of centextually related advertisers and potentially (collectively) fund the podcasters as aggregate.

The mobile phone services offered by podlinez and Fonpods are good examples of tools becoming available for niche podcasters to both spread their content via new platforms as well as gain some monetization for their efforts and help to keep the proverbial lights on.

November 13th, 2006 at 2:29 pm

This is not a new concept as the Mobile Broadcasting Network has been doing this for many years now, but with the growth in interest around getting web-based audio streamed into the phone.

While it is interesting and easy to listen to a podcast by dialing a phone number, it is not what people would think of doing on a phone. The other thing is that this process does not enable podcast search & discovery, bookmarking in the content for later continuation on the phone, being able to get a call while listening to a podcast and then resume it after the call is over. The other drawback is the potential for getting high audio quality playback on the phone.

I can see a small segment of the market being interested in doing this process by saving podcasts phone numbers in their contact list on the phone like a person, but it is just not a long-term model for meeting the long-term listener needs in a iPod replacement device like many of the new mobile phones are becoming.

This is good for a person who has a extra minutes to use for this or likes to listen on the weekends when minutes are unlimited, but it will not be a long-lived model that will work.

December 28th, 2006 at 2:38 pm

Great discussion on a post about a great idea!
I think everyone has a valid point or suggestion about this exciting development. Having to travel extensively and be away from my desk, my PC and a internet connection, I very often pity the wasted time in the car, air ports etc. I tend to strongly forsee that this will be a big development, pushed by the business community always on the move.
Every one in the world has (or will soon have) a mobile phone which almost makes it a body organ for consumption and any thing which can come down a mobile phone is going to be in demand.
Unlike the guy who predicted that the world will need at best five main frame computers, I am on the side of those who think this is going to be a big trend.