Pour one for iPod, the beautiful little gadget of my teenage dreams. While Apple finally discontinued its latest iPod this week, the pod continues to live in the digital audio environment we all love and obsess over.
The iPod has never really been the format in which podcasts thrive (this will be the smartphone), but at the time the podcasts began, the iPod was almost the only game in town. In 2004, the iPod controlled 60 percent of the total MP3 player market. This was the default option for listening to audio broadcasts on the go, albeit inelegant.
In 2004, the iPod dominated the MP3 market
“It was a terrible experience,” said Leo Laporte, founder of the early digital audio show This Week in Tech (TwiT) and host of the radio show The Tech Guy. “You had to download it to your computer, connect your computer via iTunes to your iPod, copy it to your iPod, and then you can listen to it.
But with the gadget’s ubiquity, the name “podcast” seemed naturally appropriate for the torn online audio shows that were beginning to emerge. So natural that two people claim to have put together an iPod and a broadcast together. The first recorded case was in a 2004 Guardian article by journalist and technologist Ben Hammersley, where he threw around potential names for the media (GuerillaMedia did not catch). That same year, digital audio pioneer Danny Gregoire called one of his software programs “podcaster” and registered domain names that included the word “podcast”, then promoted it with the help of former MTV VJ and early podcast host Adam Curry. Gregoire says he didn’t know about Hammersley’s article before he came up with the name. “It’s an obvious word to come up with, given the technology,” he said. Hammersley did not respond to a request for comment.
Apple embraced podcasting with all its heart
Anyway, she caught on. Not only did Apple keep the word alive, despite potential trademark infringement, but it embraced the media with all its heart, creating a podcast directory on iTunes in 2005. That same year, George W. Bush began airing his presidential radio address in the form of podcast. The new Oxford American Dictionary drew attention to all the hype and made “podcast” the word of the year for 2005.
Not everyone was excited. For years, Laporte has been fighting – and losing – the battle to rebrand “podcasting” as “netcasting”, arguing that the word binds form too closely to Apple. Time has proved him right and wrong. Yes, the iPod was a passing phase in the development of podcasting. But the word has outgrown its namesake to the point where Apple is only part of the podcasting ecosystem, not even the dominant one. Spotify has taken its crown as the most used platform for podcasts, and Apple’s podcast programming is minimal, at best.
However, the word is inevitable. A few years ago, Laport stepped down and finally changed the TWiT Netcast Network to the TWiT Podcast Network. “Language is like that,” he said. “You can’t fight it.”
This story was originally published in Hot Pod, the leading newsletter for The Verge’s audio industry. You can subscribe here for more reviews, analyzes and reports.
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