In his excellent article "What Podcasting is NOT," Tom Hespos of Underscore Marketing focuses on the difference between podcasting and radio or television. His point, which is a very good one, is that podcasting is far more interactive. Even though podcasters may be the ones to choose the programming, listeners take an active part through audio comments, e-mail, and written comments to podcast blogs, and often shape the content of future shows as a result.

As a Natural Born Pedant and specialist in the treatment of Podcastus Ignoramus, I want to address the question of what podcasting is not from a different angle. My nit-picky hackles go up every time someone claims that X is a podcast when it really isn't.

Podcast and MP3 are not synonyms. MP3s have been around for a good 10 years. Podcasts are new and revolutionary, and without understanding the distinction between podcasting and other kinds of audio on the internet, it's hard to see what the fuss is about.

Podcasting Is Not Streaming Audio

Streaming audio has been around for a long time. When you visit a web page and a player opens up and sound starts coming out of your speakers, that's streaming audio. When you visit a more polite web page and it gives you a play button to click on and listen, that's streaming audio. Web radio stations are streaming audio.

Streaming audio is fine if you want to sit at your computer to listen to it, right then and there. Personally, I usually don't, especially if the audio file is more than a few minutes long. I can't listen and work at the same time. I've gone so far as to record streaming audio so I can listen to it later. (See my "Why I Hate Flash Audio" article if you're curious about the details.)

Podcasting Is Not Downloadable Audio

I became a teleseminar junkie in early 2005, and I still sign up for many free teleseminars on subjects I'm interested in--though I rarely call in. Most conference call hosts will record your call for you, and many teleseminar hosts will send all the participants a link they can click to download the file. Marketing guru Robert Middleton records his teleclasses himself (on a tape recorder!) and converts them into Real Audio format so budding infogurus can download them from his website.

I like downloadable audio files, because they're portable. I can listen to them when and where I want, by putting them onto CDs or my MP3 player. (Proprietary formats like Real Audio have to be re-recorded or otherwise converted to another format in order to play on most portable media players, however.)

Downloadable audio is very good for one-off recordings, and I don't think it's going to go away soon. But before you can download one of these files, you have to know it's there. Either you stumble across it on a search or by returning to a web page to check, or the person posting the audio file has to send out an e-mail message or other notification to let you know something is up there.

The Podcast Difference

A podcast, in contrast, is an ongoing series of digital audio or video recordings which listeners can subscribe to. This is like subscribing to a newspaper: the new audio file shows up on your computer as soon as it's available, without your having to go and get it.

The real difference between podcasts and downloadable audio is the delivery method. The content can be the same: your weekly teleseminar is the same whether people call in live, hear it streamed on your website, download it manually, or have it delivered right to your desktop.

While a single audio file delivered through an RSS feed might technically be a podcast, there wouldn't be much point creating a feed for just one file. Hence creating a podcast has become almost synonymous with starting an ongoing talk radio program which appears on a regular schedule. (Listeners like regular schedules, even when they don't listen to the show at any given time. Producing a show on a regular schedule gives you credibility.)

The fact that tradition radio stations like NPR have jumped on the podcast bandwagon and started making their shows available by RSS subscription is no doubt part of why Hespos felt the need to write his article explaining the difference between traditional radio (even when redistributed over the internet) and podcasts that start out as podcasts.

The way listeners become part of creating the shows is even more revolutionary than the ability to connect your media player to your computer and have your podcatcher add all the new episodes to it so you can listen to them while driving or walking the dog, but the portability of podcasts is one of the things that got me hooked on them. So is knowing that there'll be another episode of my favorite podcast next week.

Now for the Confusing Part

Podcasters want listeners--why else spend all that time recording and editing a show? They know that not everyone owns an MP3 player and not everyone wants to figure out how to use podcatching software. (Not to mention the fact that not everyone will want to subscribe before hearing an episode.) So most podcast blogs include streaming audio players to let you listen to the show online, and links to let you manually download the files.

You can stream a podcast. You can download a podcast. But if you can't subscribe to it, it's not a podcast. If you want to put streaming-only audio on your website, great. (It's especially effective for sales and name squeeze pages.) If you have a single recorded presentation and want visitors to your site to be able to download it, wonderful. That's a service to them.

Just don't call it a podcast if I can't subscribe to it and get the latest episode as soon as it comes out.

© 2006 Sallie Goetsch

As co-founder of the Podcast Asylum, Sallie Goetsch (rhymes with "sketch") writes and speaks about podcasting from the listener's perspective. She started "smoking the podcast dope" in April 2005 and immediately began using podcasting to make connections and attract prospects from around the world without recording her own podcast.

She works tirelessly to cure the epidemic of Podcastus Ignoramus among business owners and produces Reports from the Asylum for the popular communications podcast For Immediate Release

If you or someone you know is suffering from a podcast-related mental health syndrome, write to sallie [at] podcastasylum.com