[BHG’s prediction addiction]
as of today’s date (19/11/2005)
25,000 Podcasts and counting on iTunes
19,921 are be tracked by PodNova.com
10,276 submitted to podcastalley.com
numbers numbers, Im looking at a magic number 36,000, the number of radio stations worldwide (according to ‘I am an oil tanker‘ by Fi Glover). 5000 of these stations broadcast / stream on the web according to brsradio.com.
OK a podcast is akin to a show not a station, but as these podcasts are independently (of each other) distributed, subscribed & listened to, I will hold the comparison for now.
Now to do this correctly I would need historic benchmarks from the 4 sources above which I only have anecdotally but PodNova was tracking 13,000 6 weeks ago. That’s 1000 new podcasts a week. This week iTunes(>4.8) (with podcasts) is 5 months old and it started with about 8,000 now 25,000+ that?s a growth of 810 a week for iTunes and I wont compare figures for podcastalley.com as there have slowed so much since podshow stepped in.
So with these growth rates in 14 weeks time say February 28th 2006 or St. Patricks Day (17/03), iTunes should be listing more podcasts than the world has radio stations.
This will make podcasts more numerous than radio, but it wont make is bigger than radio. Radio has a 100 year head start. It wont either allow podcasting take radio’s ‘STAR’ any time soon, nor will it eat much of its ad revenue.
Now take 36,000 podcasts as choice. See how trends in radio listening is falling hour by day by week by commute. Add iPod Xmas, and a dollop of press hype and podcasts will eat the socks off banal radio wallpaper.
You see it is not podcasting versus radio, its passion over dominance.
LONG LIVE RADIO (wherever you may be)
“So don’t become some background noise
A backdrop for the girls and boys
Who just don’t know or just don’t care
And just complain when you’re not there
You had your time you had the power
You’ve yet to have your finest hour
Radio” (queen).