Podcasters turn the parley into profits

Podcasting - the dissemination of downloadable audio files such as radio shows and spoken weblogs - has generated acres of column inches in recent months, and now it's generating cash. Venture capitalists have ploughed large sums into high-profile podcasting projects, and a growing number of businesses are climbing aboard the podcasting bandwagon.

Last week venture capitalists Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital put $8.85 million into Podshow, the portal led by podcasting co-creator Adam Curry, while podcasting startup Odeo received an undisclosed sum from investors. Odeo is the latest project involving Evan Williams, who helped create the Blogger.com blogging system that's now part of the Google empire.

Meanwhile organisations including the BBC, Virgin Radio, NASA and the Wall Street Journal all publish free podcasts via Apple's iTunes Music Store, which attracts millions of listeners.

It's clear that podcasting is gathering momentum, but is there any money in it? The venture capitalists clearly think so, but their choice of investments is significant: they're putting money into podcasting portals, not podcasts. Like blogging, there's little money available to individual podcasters; the real rewards will go to the firms who make podcasting tools, run podcasting portals or use podcasting as part of their wider activities.

So Apple will sell more iPods, radio stations will expand their audiences and portals will sell advertising space; a few high-profile podcasters will attract sponsorship or advertising, but the majority will generate little or no income.

Sadly for most content creators, it seems that podcasting is unlikely to lead to podcash.

More news from journalism.co.uk:
BBC plays with podcasting
BBC expands podcast trial
BBC web radio tops 9 million downloads

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