Niall Kennedy, the “N” in the ONPodSessions says podcasts are like drive time radio, except user programmed. Download your favorite podcasts to your iPod on a broadband connection; connect it to your car stereo and in his words, you are good to go! An hour-and-a-half hour long commute from San Francisco to San Jose is enough to catch up on your favorite stuff. Of course others listen to podcasts at work. But do people listen to podcasts on their mobile phones?
Not sure, but Melodeo and Alltel, a Little Rock, Arkansas-based wireless carrier think that people will not only listen to podcasts on their mobile phones, but will also pay a monthly subscription fee of $3.99 a month to do so. The two companies just announced a service called, Axcess Mobilecast, a for-pay service that allows subscribers to search and listen to podcasts on their mobile phones.
How many subscribers actually sign-up for this service remains to be seen. If it is successful then there will be another glowing release. If not, well, that should be back to square one for Melodeo which started out as a peer-to-peer wireless music software/ service provider, but then last summer changed tactics to focus on the then hot and trendy business – aka podcasts. Interestingly, a quick visit to their site and you discover that the tagline is “Melodeo Podcast and Mobilcast Listening Social Networking Community” …. very buzzword compliant!
Podcasts’ popularity (or lack there off) is based on the availability of great content for free. Alltel, is one of the larger wireless carriers with about 11 million members serves mostly rural areas and serves a widespread territory. If people commute to work in their cars, it would be a tad difficult (not to mention unsafe) to listen to podcasts on their mobile phones. Of course, they could do so at home, or at work, but then they could do that on their computers for free. But then you never know… people answer emails in the bathroom stalls at the airports.
Additional resources: How to make your podcast MMS friendly and Podcast convertor for Mobile Phones.
Can’t imagine wasting all that battery…need it for calls. My guess, there won’t be a followup glowing release.
I get a feeling you might actually be right. 😉
There’s been a service operating for about a year now called Pod2Mob, which can be found at pod2mob.com .
I use it often and it’s a GREAT service. It allows the user to listen to virtually any podcast (with a little advanced set-up) on his/her mobile phone. AND it works with a heck-of-a-lot more phones than Melodeo’s Sony and Erikson limitations. (I have a Samsung).
I highly recommend that you and your readers check it out.
One advantage to the service is that if I’m out and about and haven’t had the opportunity to load a podcast onto my iPod, I can still listen. Sitting bored in the doctor’s office is just one instance where Pod2Mob has saved what little sanity I have.
-Bear
Bear, that is a good tip. we shall give this a try and see how it works out. maybe that is the way to go.
Om,
I am a long time podcaster at WebTalk Radio and also have been working full-time at Melodeo Mobilcast. I have been around this downloadable radio show space since 1999. I have been hearing this same topic and discussion about the doom and gloom of mobile podcasting. I have posted extensively about this topic at my “Mobile Phone Podcast Listening blog” that I have been writing for almost a year now.
Here is my post on this topic:
http://mobilcasting.blogspot.com/2006/08/mobile-podcasting-will-it-crash-and.html
I am hearing some write that this area of podcasting will crash and burn. I have to take exception to that view because of the interest and user activity around our mobile client already. Everyone we talk to in the media and wireless space is very excited about the opportunities on a global level.
Rob Greenlee
Melodeo Mobilcast
http://www.melodeo.com
WebTalk Radio
http://www.webtalkradio.com
I work for Melodeo and had to make a comment… Did you actually check out the website at http://www.melodeo.com? It is a social networking site (your comments about being buzzword compliant made it seem like it isn’t). Also the number of phones and vendor phones supported by Melodeo is higher than you suggest. The post from Bear sounds like a pod2mob employee.
Finally, at melodeo you can synchronize your PC and mobile phone over the air… think of it as itunes/ipod, but for web/mobile.
-Bob
Bob, sure you have community features but calling it social network is a bit of a stretch.
Sure it can handle any number of phones, but does it answer the basic question facing all mobile services: do you want to listen to podcasts on a phone. if yes, where will you do that. certainly not while driving. there are few cities in the US where commuting via public transport is a good option. So there you could plugin you headphones and listed to a podcast. Chances are many of the same commuters actually own a podcast. Just saying, its a tough market. hope you guys succeed, but there are more non-tech challenges out there.
mobile podcasting = iPod.
The need is served on a massive scale. Melodeo and the rest are fighting for a tiny piece of pie edible only by tech nerds.
Om,
I must disagree with your comments above;
“but does it answer the basic question facing all mobile services: do you want to listen to podcasts on a phone. if yes, where will you do that. certainly not while driving.”
This is the same question that faces the iPod or any other mp3 player users. I think the key thought here is that far more people have a mobile phone with media playback capability then are buying or own iPods or mp3 players. The difference is 10’s of millions own mp3 players versus 100’s of millions for mobile phones.
The other major difference is always having access to the latest episodes from major and minor media souces. Once podcasting becomes almost real-time then the content becomes more valuable to the listener. I am working towards taking podcast listening to a whole new level with location based content that is updated very regularly. The mobile phone and wireless networks enable the listener to get niche genre content that is relevant locally as well.
You also say that people will not listen while driving, well that is the present but not the future. Every year is showing more and more cars having mini-jacks in the car. Bluetooth is another technology that could enable audio listening from the mobile phone.
I believe that this distribution platform will work, given positive energy, great new content and technology improvements.
Rob Greenlee
WebTalk Radio
Melodeo
http://www.melodeo.com