"Shannon Clark Says:
May 13th, 2005 at 10:25 pm
I read about 150 some blogs (about 160 feeds in my rss reader, but ~10 of them are search results etc)

I subscribe to about 35-40 podcasts.

For me they serve very different and equally interesting purposes.

Blogs I read for content, to follow friends, less often for entertainment.

Podcasts, at least the ones I follow, I listen to mostly for entertainment, occasionally to learn. I subscribe to about 20 podcasts which are mostly music - various IndieFeed podcasts, Rock & Roll Geek Show, Coverville, Karin’s themed podcasts, the $250 Million Radio Show and a few others. These have entirely replaced listening to radio for me - they play great music, selected with care by someone who cares and usually puts the music together in a way that is very compelling - great listening and vastly better than commercial radio (though I would be happy if they included ads especially if that meant they could continue to do what they do).

A few other notables - WeFunk (nearly 2 hours of great radio, broadcast on radio but available on the web); The Thomas Edison show - from NJ, a 1 hour show also broadcast on radio but available as a podcast of early turn of the century recordings, many from the archives of the Thomas Edison museam.

I then also subscribe to a handful of other podcasts - Adam Curry’s because I enjoy it, Dawn and Drew because I mostly enjoy it, KOMO news which would be even better were I in Seattle but shows how commercial radio can use podcasting very effectively 30 second to 2 minute short news stories - great stuff and good to shuffle amidst my other listening. And I listen to IT Conversations for deep, rich, highly interesting tech interviews and conference recordings - much more compelling than reading a powerpoint presentation or even a report of a presentation - and vastly more portable than trying to view a small video/web presentation if that were even an option (full disclosure, the conference I run, MeshForum will be distributed by IT Conversations later this Spring).

And I listen to a few other shows like the Podcast Network, David Winer, Benjamin Walker’s Theory of Everything, Le Show from Harry Shearer etc.

A common theme to most of the podcasts I listen to - they are made by people who if not professional radio people are very close, and in most cases have a significent background in audio recording and often in radio. i.e. They put together a well recorded (usually) and compelling show. Some, like Benjamin Walker do a lot of audio editing, others record and do no editing, but all sound good.

I think of my ipod shuffle as my self-programmed radio. For me podcasts offer a mix of music and tech (mostly) with bit of politics mixed in which I can set up quickly and listen to over the course of the day.

So I encourage you to give other podcasts a chance.

One final note - based on the podcasts I subscribe to 15-20 megs is a more accurate average and quite a few that I get are more like 50+ megs. I think this reflects deeper more comprehensive content - might be worth looking for larger podcasts to sample them.

Shannon