The simmering rivalry between mainstream media, and content generated and distributed by consumers bubbled to the surface last weekend at Europe’s first podcasting conference held in London on 17 September...

By Deirdre Molloy

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The diverging paths of mainstream media production and consumption on the one hand, and content generated and distributed by consumers on the other was thrown into sharp relief last weekend at the PodcastCon UK conference in London’s Berner’s Hotel, as user generated content (UGC) took centre stage.

Billed rightly as Europe’s first ever podcasting conference, the day featured talks and live podcasts from old media and new. Speakers from BBC Radio and Virgin Radio featured alongside upcoming voices in the UK podcasting scene including Mark Hunter of The Podsafe Music Network and a live zoo-style podcast of The Richard Vobes Radio Show.

But while the more ‘pod-friendly’ media brands found a willing audience – and engaged thoughtfully with 120-strong audience – the whole feel of the conference, from its bottom-up co-ordination by four podcasters from different parts of the UK who had never been in the same room before – to the plentiful and insightful contributions (plus copious recording – via podcasts, blogs and Flickr) by delegates – was of a people’s conference, a self-organising commons where ideas were shared and developed in tandem, and distributed immediately worldwide, rather than handed down in an exclusive setting by an anointed elite. Strewth!

UGC producers out-sophisticate the mainstream!

But this was no ramshackle gathering. The hotel was plush enough; sponsors be (the UK’s first 24 Meg ISP) lent it a bountiful high tech-sheen; and the good food and refreshments (including Stormhoek wine) kept everyone in fine fettle, complimenting the hum of business ideas, geek wizardry and good humour that reverberated throughout the day. All this seemed further proof of not just the gathering momentum of user-generated content (UGC) and citizen media - especially when you realise that podcasting is only a one-year-old phenomenon – but of the dynamic entrepreneurialism underpinning its emergence.

Chris Kimber, Head BBC Radio Interactive, acknowledged the role of former employee Matt Webb who picked up on the podcasting technology first developed by Dave Winer and Adam Curry last year, leading to the BBC’s first podcasting trial in October 2004 with BBC Radio Five Live's Fighting Talk, and then Melvyn Bragg’s ‘In Our Time’ radio series available as a download to PC and portable audio devices. Today their portfolio of shows available as podcasts has expanded to cover sport, current affairs, documentaries, film reviews and more – denoted by the Beeb’s new pizza-box podcasting logo and tagline ‘radio to go.’

No gatekeepers in the podscape

Alongside the on-demand, time-shifting and cool-by-iPod-association strengths of podcasting radio content, Kimber cited its increased tangibility in comparison to broadcast radio. “It makes radio more tangible – something you can hold, touch, pick up and own,” he said. “It makes it less ephemeral, and that’s important because we love to touch and own things,” he continued, adding that it’s becoming more of a level playing field where the BBC and commercial radio are no longer the gate-keepers as they don’t control the means of production or distribution anymore.

Kimber pointed out that as podcasting’s success depends purely on the quality of the programme; the programme is the prime focus. This makes the radio station brand much less important as people will only stay subscribed to a podcast if the quality is high enough. But while he was sanguine about the disaggregation of content from brand, this rupture is surely one of the greatest threats to big media producers and broadcasters in modern times – a time when every media brand on the block seems to be pinning their hopes on the branded portal solution to creating and maintaining a mass audience.

Podcasting makes radio cool again

The opportunity, as he portrayed it, was that the BBC can now offer programmes in the non-linear world and hence reach people who wouldn’t normally listen to a certain radio show, or be able to. So podcasting can bring in new listeners to BBC Radio. He closed on an optimistic note, stressing the huge amount of creativity out there and that people are generating new ideas and formats for radio, asking “how long before one of these new [amateur] podcasts becomes a show or a new presenter on Radio One?”

“Podcasting is helping to keep radio relevant for the 21st century,” he added, with the revealing aside that “peer-to-peer distribution looks attractive in terms of sharing costs.”

Later in the day Virgin Radio’s Head Of New Media James Cridland spoke about podcasting from a commercial point of view, although he was keen to stress that he the phrase “amateur” podcasters should be banned and said he wasn’t giving a sales pitch for Virgin Radio and was here to share information and learn more himself.

Mining the “long tail” through podcasting’s archive

Addressing the future of radio as multiplatform and focusing on content on the move, Cridland noted that radio on the go isn’t new – “me on the go” is what’s new. Music isn’t the thing that you time-shift radio for (for the digital consumer, music is already accessible anytime, anywhere) – rather it’s the personalities being time-shifted, as Virgin (and others) cut out the music, news and ads, although there’s still a lot of incongruous time-checks in there!

Each Virgin podshow begins with one ad – or “podvert” – and they try always to make that ad relevant to the show/audience. In response to a question, Cridland said he believed that people didn’t skip their ads to any great degree but demurred that personalised advertising and show sponsorship were the ways forward in this regard. He also flagged-up the of the launch of iTunes podcast directory in June: prior to this Virgin podcast shows averaged 100-200 downloads a day, now it ranges between 250-1,000 per show per day, and people are exploring the archive more – a trend that dovetails neatly with the “long tail” model of making money from the entire expanse of content rather than just the latest or “hit” programmes.

Media brands stake out their podcast territory

Audience reception to Cridland was sometimes dismissive and hostile. Bizarrely, Virgin were condemned for embracing podcasting – because this was just another way for “big media” to distribute their “top-down” content – in the same breath that they were slated for not producing more innovative podcast content.

One delegate commented that what appeals to people about podcasting is that it’s a bottom-up medium. In an evolving market people will take more of the same, but the market would grow more if you gave them something different. Your correspondent wonders what people would have thought if Virgin had not dipped its toes in the podcasting waters at all? Damned if they do and damned if they don’t, apparently!

When Ewan Spence raised the fraught area of music licensing issues, Cridland countered that Virgin don’t chop out the music because of copyright issues, but because the content stands for itself. Until they can get DRM for podcasts the music industry doesn’t want to talk to them anyway. Record companies have licensed them (at a cost of £1.2m per annum) to play music on AM and FM, and the labels are even more controlling about how they broadcast the music. However, Virgin is trying to make record companies understand that podcasting is good for marketing, he added.

Direct-to-consumer gets another leg-up

Peter Wells-Thorpe of The 3003 Group made a more pertinent point regarding the mainstream / UGC fracture in media production and consumption habits that podcasting encapsulates – “you get it, but you can’t do anything about it.” In his view, podcasting “allows creative people to get in touch directly with consumers without going through the middleman.”

This was perhaps the elephant in the room for Cridland, Kimber, et al, and even for the Microsoft MSN Spaces and other radio conglomerate delegates there on the day. The balance of power is shifting – slightly but perceptibly – towards consumers and creatives outside the media giants and major labels. Acknowledging that takes some of the wind from your sales, not to mention advertising bucks from your coffers, and gets you either tied in knots, or into some interesting revision of ideas...

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NMK will explore other PodcstCon UK sessions – including those on unsigned music, business-models, and the educational potential of podcasting – in future articles.

Further coverage of PodcastCon 2005 (UK):

In the meantime, get the PodcastCon line-up here:
www.podcastcon.co.uk

The delegate list here: Wiki page

And the blog coverge here:
BritCaster: Podcastcon UK forum
Technorati: Podcastconuk
Flickr: Podcastconuk, Podcastcon
Google Blogs: Podcastconuk, Podcasting

Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting