What is a podcast?
This article is at least a year old
What is a podcast? It’s a simple question: but it doesn’t, quite, have a simple answer. I’m regularly asked this: so, here’s an attempt to work out what a 'podcast’ really is.
The origin of the word
We’ve written a long history of the word podcast. The word wasn’t coined until February 2004, and wasn’t used by anyone other than the journalist who coined it until September that year.
As the history shows, the first podcast (though not called that) had been published almost a year earlier, on Jul 9, 2003; the first podcast feed, as defined by the technical definition of a podcast, was in Jan 2001.
Perhaps, even, the first thing that was much the same as a podcast, both technically and editorially, was from Robin Williams and Audible back in January 2000 - audio interviews with showbiz friends, recorded in Williams’s house, then delivered automatically to a portable audio player.
Either way, podcasts existed before they were called podcasts. (Just as mobile phone apps existed before they were called mobile phone apps).
The technical answer
Most podcasters would agree that, technically, a podcast has five elements:
- an audio file
- in mp3 (or AAC) format
- without DRM
- available to download
- distributed via an RSS feed using an
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(You can have video podcasts, but they’re called “video podcasts”.)
What people think are podcasts
According to the Edison Research Podcast Consumer Tracker from Q2/21, the platforms used most often in the US for podcasts are…
- Spotify - 24%
- Apple Podcasts - 21%
- YouTube - 18%
You will note that YouTube is #3 on this list, even though it does not satisfy any of the above elements.
It’s not just the US. In fact, in Germany the most popular platform for podcast listening is YouTube (YouGov, June 2021).
And, in the UK (Ofcom, March 2022), people say they listen to podcasts on Spotify (41%), YouTube (34%), and on BBC Sounds (which doesn’t use RSS feeds, at 38%).
This is confused further by shows like No Agenda that publish on YouTube and YouTube Music as audio, as well as on “proper” podcast apps. Are you listening to a podcast when you listen on YouTube or YouTube Music? Absolutely. Is it a podcast app? No.
Shows like TWiT take this one step further. You can listen to TWiT in your favourite podcast player; but you can watch it on YouTube as a fully-produced television show. When listening on YouTube Music, you can flip a switch to turn on the video, or just stick with the audio. And you can download it as video, using RSS enclosures.
The real answer
“A podcast is on-demand audio. Like a radio show, but on-demand.”
That’s it. That’s all a podcast really is.
The “on-demand” bit is important. It’s the defining thing about podcasting.
The “audio” bit is important. Yes, you can get video podcasts, but the point of any podcast, even one with video in it, is as a piece of audio. (Close your eyes, and it should still work).
The “like a radio show” bit is imperfect: podcasts can be very different to the kind of polished radio shows you might hear on NPR or the BBC. But it tries to convey that you’ll hear human beings talking: which makes it different from an algorithmic Pandora music stream, for example.
Are things on YouTube or YouTube Music “podcasts”?
Well, not technically: YouTube isn’t using RSS feeds for this (at least, not yet).
But they’re absolutely what humans would call a podcast. YouTube call them podcasts too. And, as we’ve seen above, so do the general public.
Are Spotify exclusives “podcasts”?
Well, not technically: they don’t appear as a DRM-free enclosure in an RSS feed.
But they’re absolutely what humans would call a podcast; and Spotify, themselves, call them podcasts.
Spotify itself plays “podcasts”, delivered via RSS, but it also plays plenty of things that aren’t delivered that way but still sound, look and smell like podcasts.
Are paid-for Apple Podcasts Subscriptions “podcasts”?
Well, not technically. You can’t subscribe in any podcast app other than Apple’s, and they don’t appear in a DRM-free enclosure in an RSS feed.
But Apple calls them podcasts, as do the people who make them available that way, like Luminary or Radiotopia. If it looks like a duck, and sounds like a duck, most people will call it a duck.
What does anyone else think?
Some of the first people to “podcast” also agree. Todd Cochrane and Rob Greenlee, who were both podcasting in October 2004, said this in The New Media Show on Feb 8 2023:
Todd: A technical definition of what a podcast is - that ship has sailed. You know, I understand where people are concerned, but…
Rob: Yeah, I don’t take the hard stance on that anymore because I think if you look at it from how the listener or viewer looks at it, I think you can totally see how that could that perception could happen. But if you’re a content creator, I think you have to understand the differences, but as far as what the audience thinks, I’m just kind of accepted that podcasting is much more expanded now than what people think it is.
Todd: Personally, I can maintain that podcasting is derived from an RSS feed, but I’m also big enough to know that for the audience they don’t care that it derives from an RSS feed.
Rob: And at the end of the day, I guess we shouldn’t care either. If they think it’s a podcast, it must be a podcast, right? I can’t change somebody’s mind - and say 'Sorry, that’s not a podcast’. It looks like it. It sounds like it.
Todd: Yeah. So it looks like it smells like it, everything.
Does an argument about “what a podcast is” help the industry move forward?
An argument about the benefits of an open ecosystem certainly helps.
However, it’s probably not too helpful to tell people who have just spent an hour listening to their favourite podcast on YouTube that, in fact, they’ve not been listening to a podcast. Because they have.
