Will podcasting pick up in the Philippines?

Somebody asked me that last week and I sort of said more on the negative side. Mostly, I’m optimistic when it comes to the area of blogging but with podcasts, I’m still a bit skeptical. I actually don’t know. Maybe in terms of podcast listeners, it would pick up fast, but not so much with the number of podcasters.

Here are some of the technical and not-so-technical reasons I had in mind:

As Leo Laporte once said in TWiT, podcasting is all about the “long tail”. Meaning, you get the precipitates in traffic. People could happen to visit your blog but not necessarily listen to your podcast.
Timeliness. Podcasts are not as fast as your regular blog. It takes time to record, edit and publish. Most of the time, it’s stale news or about last week’s issues.
Technical barriers. Not everybody has a mic or knows how to edit a recording and convert them to .H264 or MP3.
It just takes more effort. If a regular blogger can’t manage to post a single entry on a daily basis, much more for a podcast.
Podcasting is more than just the content, it’s about personality and delivery — and not every blogger has that. It’s basically an internet radio show.
ROI. Yes, there’s Fruitcast but that’s it. Even Diggnation and TWiT had a hard time coming up with revenues to offset their server costs. Imagine, the bandwidth for the TWiT RSS feed alone costs over $200 a month!

Well, these are inherent barriers actually and are not limited to the Philippines. However, if you add factors such as the number of people on dial-up which cannot easily download the podcast, the number of people accessing the net via internet cafes that have download restrictions, and the number of people accessing the net thru their work offices which do not have PC speakers or even sound cards for that matter — that just makes your potential audience a wee bit thinner.

Come to think of it, a lot of the long-standing Pinoy podcasts I’ve been listening to are not recorded in the Philippines. Despite that, I still hope I could add myself to the pinoy podcaster stats sometime soon.

[tags]free podcasts, ipod podcasts, video podcasts, vidcast[/tags]

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14 Comments

Michael · 11 years ago

Do we have updates already re podcasting in the Philippines? I’m starting my own very soon. I’m trying to search for related articles on updates and all but can’t find any.

Sien Lee · 19 years ago

Abe,

hi! first of all i would like to introduce myself. Iam Sien, 3rd yr Mass comm student, im really interested in podcasting, i can say that podcasting is NEW to me, but i really want to know everything about it. Iam doin’ a thesis paper with this subject and i hope you could help me out.
thanks!

Miguel · 20 years ago

I’m starting to try out the Nokia N-Series podcast app. If this technology (WiFi on phones especially) gets popular, then we can have more podcast listeners.

Until I got the Nokia N80, I did not own an iPod or any type of player, so no chance to listen.

liberal · 21 years ago

this is an interesting discussion. you might be right with your bleak outlook if you see podcasting as a more personal communications tool. but if you look at it strategically (also as a marketing tool), and consider the eventuality of actually putting podcasts onto mobile phones, then – considering the Filipinos craze for hand phones – you get a different picture. in my view, it’s only a matter of time and podcasts will be big. unfortunately, the amateurs who are excited right now might be left out then.

Manuel Viloria · 21 years ago

Hi Abe,

What about a 3 MB podcast (8 minutes, 24Kbps), once a week? That comes out to 12 GB/month.

You can also try LibSyn.com which not penalize your podcast if it gets too popular. :-)

Anyway, I’ll patiently wait for your podcast. When the listener is ready, the podcaster will appear.

Abe Olandres Editor-in-chief · 21 years ago

Manuel,

Having 50 or 100 listeners is manageable. You can even stretched it to 1,000 if you will.

But look at the bandwidth here 20MB x 1,000 downloads x 2/week x 4weeks. That’s about 160GB of bandwidth. Hole in the pocket.

I did try to record a podcast twice, only to scrap it altogether. I’m the worst critic of myself.

Perhaps if podcasters offer streaming audio versions of their podcasts (i.e., free flash players courtesy of podpickle), and if they would offer lower bitrate versions, then more people will be able to hear the podcasts.

You’re right… it takes a whole lot more than 15 minutes to produce a 10-minute podcast.

As for the staleness issue, this can be alleviated by podcasting about evergreen topics. Or if popular radio comentaristas will upload their shows daily, then that can lock-in some amount of freshness.

Podcasting personality and delivery? The same can be said for blogging and writing. Then again, the lack of personality has its own special kind of charm. :-)

I’m looking forward to hearing your podcast someday, Abe. Kahit isa man lang.