I should clarify - I don't mean that IE7 is going to sell music, but I do mean that Rick Klau of Feedburner thinks that the podcasting space is going to explode once again once IE7 comes out with its built-in reader and podcatching abilities. That should be at least as big a boon to podcasting as the introduction of podcasts and podcatching into iTunes 4.9.
Rick points out that there are 50-60 million iPods out there, but hundreds of millions of computers. The argument goes something like "IE7 will put feeds and podcasts in front of a that vast majority of computer users who don't use portable players and have never seen a feed before in their life". I'm pissed at Rick for bringing iPods into the discussion and therefore helping to perpetuate the myth that iPods and podcasts are somehow connected, but I'll get over it.
Some more interesting info:
FeedBurner manages 70,000 podcast feeds and has 5 million subscribers to those feeds. As Frank Barnako points out, that's
FB is seeing a 20-30% growth each month
There's no way to see anything other than a show was downloaded. FB doesn't know whether shows are being listened to on computer or devices and really, no one else does either.
This information came from an interview with Rick Klau and the San Francisco Chronicle from the PME floor.
For the record: the longer comment I made about iPods was not to conflate iPods and podcasting, but that overnight, iTunes more than doubled the podcasting audience. And based on the stats we (FeedBurner) see today, iTunes represents just around 60% of the overall audience. So while iPods != podcasting, there's at least quite a lot of overlap between the iPod community and the podcasting audience as a whole.
Ah, Rick, When I wrote that I did it with the knowledge that you would stop by. I know you FB types monitor the web rabidly :)
I accept that the sound byte I heard was probably just that - a byte - and there was more to it.
Thanks for clarifying. I think that FB is probably one of the best statistical indicators on podcasting that we have right now despite all of the new services claiming to be able to deliver podcast stats.
You're pissed at me? We can't have that. ;)
For the record: the longer comment I made about iPods was not to conflate iPods and podcasting, but that overnight, iTunes more than doubled the podcasting audience. And based on the stats we (FeedBurner) see today, iTunes represents just around 60% of the overall audience. So while iPods != podcasting, there's at least quite a lot of overlap between the iPod community and the podcasting audience as a whole.
Hopefully that gets me off the hook...
--Rick
Posted by: Rick Klau | October 7, 2006 9:26 PM | Permalink to Comment