BY DAVE RILEY
All the contention that is focused on the world wide web's innate ability to facilitate the sharing of music files has obscured the significance of some more recent web audio developments. If the Mp3 revolution is impacting on sales of compact discs, the burgeoning use of portable Mp3 players is changing the listening habits of millions worldwide. Some pundits are even predicting the end of radio as we know it.
Driving some of this speculation is the new technology of "podcasting". Podcasting is a way to get web audio automatically downloaded to your computer or portable audio player. Rather than having to listen when items are being generated, a podcast program (called a podcatcher) enables you to select all the audio you want for playback at your own convenience.
ABC Radio National, as well as its youth radio network Triple J, have already made their core talk programs available as downloadable podcasts. Now you can listen to John Safran or Philip Adams, if it is your wish, any day of the week, any time of the day or night.
But podcasting is more than a new or easier way of listening. Because it opens up the tools of the web to anyone with an inclination to exploit them, podcasting also generates a new medium for political and campaign outreach. Podcasting democratises audio because a podcast can be generated with the simplest and cheapest of tool boxes. You won't need hundreds of thousands of dollars for an FM radio broadcast licence, a sound studio or a transmitter to create a podcast. A freeware audio program, a web page and a microphone is all you require.
Podcasting is less than two years old and its political ramifications are still unclear. Traditionally the movement for social change has been accompanied by community radio endeavours, which panned out in the 1970s. A few progressive radio stations were created, like Melbourne's Radio 3CR. But with podcasting, the audience is not contained by geography. While you can't listen to 3CR on the web, you can catch as podcasts such alternative news services such as Democracy Now!, which is produced by Pacifica Network in the US, and Eric Lee's Radio LabourStart, no matter where you are located.
For the moment, the domain of podcasting is still small compared to the massive numbers of bloggers worldwide. Whereas blogs — web-based logs and commentaries — have tended to be exploited effectively as a political vehicle by the US right, no such hegemony exists with podcasting. The progressive side of politics has been very adept in taking up the options that podcasting offers. For the moment, all the media hype surrounding iPod — Apple's portable Mp3 player that every young person is supposed to want to own — is obscuring the background activity that is not just focused on finding a new way to listen to music. Podcasting is essentially a new radio format open to all of us, either as listeners or wannabe broadcasters.
[Dave Riley runs Ratbag Radio, a web radio station and podcast, at http://ratbagradio.blogspot.com
From Green Left Weekly, December 7, 2005.
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