Apple today announced that in just two days iTunes customers have subscribed to more than one million Podcasts from the new iTunes Podcast Directory. iTunes 4.9 has everything users need to discover, subscribe, manage and listen to Podcasts built in, so users can now have each new episode of their favorite Podcasts automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod.
“With the release of iTunes 4.9, listeners are voting with their ears,” said Adam Curry, co-founder of the PodShow Podcast Network in the press release. “Subscriptions have dramatically increased across our entire PodShow Podcast Network, and I predict over the coming months that iTunes will introduce tens of millions of new listeners to the world of Podcasting.”
“Podcasting is like cappuccino,” said August Trometer, developer of iPodderX in the press release. “Gourmet coffee was around for a long time, but it took Starbucks to put it on the map. Apple is like the Starbucks of Podcasting and advertisers will take us more seriously now.”
“iTunes has done what possibly no one else could have accomplished, propelled Podcasting into the mainstream,” said Will Lewis, management consultant for KCRW in the press release. “Our servers have been swamped with a stratospheric increase in traffic. In fact, downloads have increased tenfold as a result of the iTunes 4.9 launch.”
iTunes enables anyone to quickly and easily find and subscribe to their favorite Podcasts so that every time there’s a new episode, it’s automatically downloaded to their Mac or PC and Auto-Synced to their iPod. iTunes also makes it easy to manage multiple Podcast subscriptions with simple organization and display by episode and date. iPods now offer an easy to use Podcast menu, including bookmarking within a Podcast and the ability to display color Podcast artwork.
With Apple’s legendary ease of use, pioneering features such as integrated Podcasting support, iMix playlist sharing, seamless integration with iPod and groundbreaking personal use rights, the iTunes Music Store is the best way for Mac and PC users to legally discover, purchase and download music online. The iTunes Music Store features more than 1.5 million songs from the major music companies and over 1,000 independent record labels, 10,000 audiobooks, gift certificates and exclusive music not found anywhere else online.
Find out more about Apple iTunes’ podcasting features here.
Plug it in, plug it in.
I was three of them!
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You need the KY first baby! ouch!!
MDN word of the day… cost!
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Wow.
But did anyone really expect anything less? (other than the analcysts, anyway)
one million in two days…. wow.
And in the entire iTunes 4.9/Podcast story lives the digital audio content market in microcosm.
The customer base at large doesn’t want “choice” in the Microsoft/Real sense of the word: they want integrated simplicity, as opposed to diverse and over-complex heterogeneity. iTunes, iTMS, iPod and Airport Express combined represent that simplicity at its most rational: a simple range of of six products that give the music consumer the ability to buy what they want, rip what they want, listen where and when they please, and burn what they want.
Compare this to Creative’s over-complicated range of players, which have to be mated to poorly designed music management software and a range of stores, each of which has different rights for different tracks and varying degrees of usability.
Here’s the simple truth for Microsoft, Creative, Real and their fellow travellers: we live in a rushed world over-burdened by complexity every hour of the day, the last thing we want or need is to be confronted by unnecessary choices in our leisure time when we’re supposed to be enjoying the fruits of our labours: there are many areas in life where the journey is part of the reward – but doing the “administrative” work to enjoy your music wherever and whenever you want isn’t actually one of them.
Wow. I wonder if any of those Podcasts have become “iTunes-dotted” (as in Slashdotted), so swamped with requests that the servers are overloaded.
MCCFR: Well said!
I totally agree with you that life gets busier and busier… i for one dont want to keep fighting to keep things synchronised, and working…
I’ve been reading this site for some time, and convinced my brother to buy an iBook since he needed a new computer. After buying it with him, i was playing around with it and everything just seems so simple! Everything just ‘works’. No tweaking, no tuning, no re-configuring….
What was the pincher for checking out macs (to the point of making me a switcher too)?
iPod and iTunes for windows.
Simple.
Am I the only one bothered that they’re tracking your subscriptions?
me thinks podcast in itunes is apples answer to subcription services, and best of all it’s free. stick that in your napster subscription and smoke it.
Next week it’ll be like 10,000. Those Podcasts suck
“Am I the only one bothered that they’re tracking your subscriptions?”
and that is different from other services in what way?
Man, Napster doesn’t even have a million subscribers. Someone please explain to me why they are still in business?
Yeah. But I don’t think all of the podcasters were prepared. I still can’t download the Dawn & Drew Show through iTunes, but I can finally get their site to load via the web. yesterday even that was non-responsive.
I ‘m super glad that Apple has done this, but I do wonder about bandwidth issues for some of the users. Apple is hosting only a small number of the actual podcasts. For most people a 10 fold increase in downloads means massive bandwidth bills.
I know I downloaded over two dozen podcasts myself, some of them twice since I switched computers part way through the day.
I’m not bothered by the fact that they’re tracking subscriptions. It’s important for a business to monitor how its resources are being used, especially in this case when they aren’t receiving any direct revenue from it. In a way it was smart to offload the actual feeds to the source servers, but I think they’ll start to cache the most popular feeds to maximize reliability.
I tried out podcast-surfing when it became hot last year, but the mere complexity of it quickly got the better of me. iTunes 4.9 has changed all that, and I’m hooked for good. (I even forgot about the music side of things for a while).
i’d like to see apple start hosting some of these podcasts. the large “professional” podcasts (espn, abc news, etc.) can handle the explosion of bandwidth, but for the smaller, “indie” podcasts, individuals probably aren’t so financially well off to handle the increased charges for their bandwidth. it’s great that podcasts are becoming popular, but i don’t want to see it become so expensive for people that only the big players can produce content. maybe apple will find it in their hearts to give back to the community and host some of the smaller podcasts themselves.
“…Next week it’ll be like 10,000. Those Podcasts suck”
agreed, twdldee – shows on the iTunes top 10 list fall into two categories:
news show (goodness knows we need more of them)
radio shows that nobody knew or cared about yesterday (ie Franken, Curry)
the technology is more interesting than the product right now. maybe this will create a market of its own and we’ll see better offerings.
I knew Podcasting was overrated. Pffft. Total flop.
I see the iPod mini is a total flop too.
BuyMusic is beating iTunes to a pulp, by the way.
Most people who subscribed to a podcast through iTunes in the last couple days would have already been subscribing to those podcasts through iPodder/x.
It will be interesting to note the growth of podcasts as a whole, as a result of podcast being built into iTunes. The growth will be amazing.
Podcasts are awesome. I normally only listen to streaming audio and Podcasts now. I seldom turn on the radio to hear top 40 crap. Podcasts are going to change the radio as we know it. The same way the internet has changed the way many people spend their free time. I’d rather look up what I want, when I want, rather than watching the television puke out crap I don’t want to see.
I’m sure Apple has in its tracking data the ability to list podcasts by popularity. Does this list exist anywhere online? I admit, I am partially driven by sheep mentality. With the thousands of podcast materializing, I would love to know the short list of the most popular to taste.
“Am I the only one bothered that they’re tracking your subscriptions?”
Yes, apparently you are.
Perhaps you should be more concerned about the government opening your mail, or tracking which library books and websites you visit.
MW lack, as in people who bash Apple and their products have a complete lack of understanding about what they offer.
at the library I work at, we don’t keep records of what books you have checked out before solely because we are required by law to hand in any record we have to the federal government.
fight the power….. and what not….
After discovering a dozen new Podcasts and coverting over the ones I alredy listen to, my iPodder is looking mighty lonely right now.
nobody seems to notice the fact that iTMS now has an engine that allows for subscription services……………….
:-O
MW as in: – you get the IDEA
Good point petervrdk. I guess this starts the countdown to the end of Napster.