I will also need some sound effects, background music, and loops. I can get by with free stuff found on the Internet, but I really like the commercial sound effects libraries.
And I'll need a host with plenty of disk space and no monthly transfer limit. For a reasonable amount of money.
So, summing up, the people who will make money on podcasting will be: manufacturers of MP3 players, microphones, mixers, cables, headphones, and all other audio gear, audio software (not sure about that one, Audition is free), ISPs, hosting providers, sound effects and music libraries, and possibly sound engineers and studios who may want to make extra money helping podcasters achieve broadcast quality. Oh, yes, publishers are no doubt working on podcasting books as I type.
But what about the podcasters themselves? One idea would be to sell past shows for download money or publish them on CDs. But that is so old and tried. And it doesn't work that well. Maybe a better idea would be to sell subscriptions to th new shows and give the old ones away? Or combine both approaches and provide a small window of free download opportunity? Who knows. Oh, yeah, the most popular shows will be able to sell ad space, but that's still a long way ahead. Podcasting is still a geek toy, it may be a couple of years before ordinary people discover the joys of audio without pre-programmed music created by people who talk about the things other people actually want to listen about. But it will happen. Cool!
Jacek Artymiak started his adventure with computers in 1986 with Sinclair ZX Spectrum. He's been using various commercial and Open Source Unix systems since 1991. Today, Jacek runs devGuide.net, writes and teaches about Open Source software and security, and tries to make things happen.
oreillynet.com Copyright © 2006 O'Reilly Media, Inc.