Indie casts and iTunes

For the record, the iTunes Music Store started listing podcasts on June 28, 2005. Yet just a month later, its list of top 100 podcasts has become the emerging medium's de facto standard of success, akin to the Billboard charts or the New York Times best seller list (and, to a lesser extent, Amazon sales rank).

BusinessWeek assesses how Apple Computer has, once again, upended things and completely changed the podcasting landscape:

In one of the shortest trajectories yet for a new Internet technology, podcasting has gone from the hands of indie developers to media giants in less than a year. Credit Apple. With typical finesse, it has created a centralized, easy-to-use service on iTunes that makes it a snap to find and listen to podcasts, the audio recordings that can be downloaded from the Net and played on a computer or portable music player. Apple also put out a new version of the iTunes software, which makes it easy for people to create their own podcasts, and invited all to post their creations on the site. Indie podcasters such as [Cinecast's Adam Kempenaar and Sam Hallgren] rejoiced, ready for the mainstream to embrace the technology they had championed.

But the reality isn't so simple. Apple's service, though just over a month old, is already changing the dynamics of the field. It has helped legitimize the medium, drawing traditional giants, from Ebert & Roeper parent Walt Disney to Dow Jones and News Corp. As they join iTunes, they're squeezing out many of the do-it-yourselfers who evangelized podcasting. Once a podcast drops off the top 100 list, it's almost impossible for a casual visitor to find it. For Kempenaar, the future is clear: "It will be harder for a new indie podcaster to get an audience."

The article goes on to outline the tactics indie 'casters are using to market themselves beyond iTunes, and even offers some tips on how they might carve out successful niches.

On a related note, comments to Heather Green's post on this subject at BusinessWeek Onine's Blogspotting point out that traffic for indie podcasts has still gone up because of Apple, even if they don't draw as big an audience as corporate brands.