Podcast

• 1. Introduction

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  A podcast is a program episode made available in digital format for download over the Internet. The word itself is a portmanteau, fusing "iPod" and "broadcast", coined back in 2004. That origin tells you the medium was born audio-first, built for files you download to a personal device or stream whenever you choose. Yet in 2025, Bloomberg reported that a billion people watch podcasts on the video platform YouTube every month. So how did a download format named after a music player become something people watch? And how did a term that predates Apple's own podcasting features end up tangled in trademark fights, a patent troll, and a comedian's record-breaking download numbers? The medium is low-cost, often free, and famously hard to fit into old revenue models. Its story runs through mailing lists, cease-and-desist letters, and a courtroom victory that took years to win.

• 2. Naming The Medium

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  Ben Hammersley, a Guardian columnist and BBC journalist, is credited with the earliest use of "podcasting". He coined it in early February 2004 while writing an article for The Guardian newspaper. The term then surfaced in the audioblogging community in September 2004, when Danny Gregoire introduced it in a message to the iPodder-dev mailing list. From there it was adopted by podcaster Adam Curry. Despite the name, the content was never locked to one gadget. Any computer or similar device that can play media files can access it. The label also arrived before Apple added podcasting features to the iPod and the iTunes software. That gap between word and corporate feature would later matter, because a name that grew from a community mailing list does not belong neatly to any single company.

• 3. From Mailing List To Movement

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  In September 2000, the early MP3 player manufacturer i2Go offered a service called MyAudio2Go.com, letting users download news stories to a PC or MP3 player. It lasted about a year until i2Go's demise in 2001. In October 2000, the idea of attaching sound and video files in RSS feeds appeared in a draft by Tristan Louis. That idea was implemented by Dave Winer, a software developer and an author of the RSS format. In August 2004, Adam Curry launched his show Daily Source Code. It chronicled his everyday life, delivered news, and discussed the development of podcasting itself. Curry aimed it at podcast developers, promoting new and emerging internet audio shows. As the audience grew curious about the format, those developers were inspired to build their own projects, and a community of pioneer podcasters formed quickly. In September 2004, iPodderX arrived as the first GUI application for podcasts, released by August Trometer and based on earlier work by Ray Slakinski. The pieces for a movement were now in place.

• 4. Apple And The Word Pod

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  In June 2005, Apple released iTunes 4.9, which added formal support for podcasts. That removed the need for a separate program to download episodes and move them to a mobile device. Apple also issued cease-and-desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the term "iPod" or "Pod" in their products' names. On the 26th of September 2004, it was reported that Apple had started cracking down on businesses using the string "POD". A cease-and-desist letter went that week to Podcast Ready, Inc., maker of an application called "myPodder". Apple's lawyers argued the term "pod" had been used so widely by the public to mean Apple's music player that it fell under Apple's trademark cover. The campaign reportedly extended to trademarking "IPOD", "IPODCAST", and "POD". Then on the 16th of November 2006, the Apple Trademark Department said "Apple does not object to third-party usage of the generic term 'podcast' to accurately refer to podcasting services" and that "Apple does not license the term". No statement was made about whether Apple believed it held rights to the word at all.

• 5. Disputed Ownership

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  Between February 10 and the 25th of March 2005, Shae Spencer Management, LLC of Fairport, New York filed a trademark application to register "podcast" for an "online pre-recorded radio program over the internet". On the 9th of September 2005, the United States Patent and Trademark Office rejected it, citing the existing entry describing the history of the term. The company amended the application in March 2006, but the USPTO rejected the amended version as not sufficiently different from the original. In November 2006, the application was marked as abandoned. A larger fight came from Personal Audio, a company the Electronic Frontier Foundation called a "patent troll". Personal Audio filed a patent on podcasting in 2009 for a claimed invention dating to 1996. In February 2013, it began suing high-profile podcasters for royalties, including The Adam Carolla Show and the HowStuffWorks podcasts. In October 2013, the EFF petitioned to invalidate the patent. On the 18th of August 2014, the EFF announced that Adam Carolla had settled with Personal Audio. Finally, on the 10th of April 2015, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidated five provisions of Personal Audio's podcasting patent.

• 6. The Money Question

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  Because podcast content is often free, podcasting is frequently classified as a disruptive medium, adverse to traditional revenue models. The cost to the consumer is low, and many podcasts are free to download. Some are underwritten by corporations or sponsored, carrying commercial advertisements. Others run as a business venture supported by a paid subscription, advertising, or a product delivered after sale. In February 2006, following London radio station LBC's launch of the first premium-podcasting platform, LBC Plus, there was widespread acceptance that podcasting had commercial potential. UK comedian Ricky Gervais saw his first season of The Ricky Gervais Show become a big hit, then launched a new series. The first series had been freely distributed by the Positive Internet Company and marketed through The Guardian's website. It was the world's most successful podcast for several years, eventually gaining more than 300 million unique downloads by March 2011. The second series moved to audible.co.uk and became the first major podcast to charge listeners, at 95 pence per half-hour episode. Even paid, it was regularly the most-downloaded podcast on iTunes. The Adam Carolla Show later claimed a new Guinness world record, with total downloads approaching 60 million. Guinness failed to note that Gervais's podcast had more than five times as many downloads as Carolla's at the time. Beyond ads, creators can also draw support through crowdfunding sites like Patreon, offering extras for a fee.

• 7. A Format Of Many Forms

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  Dead End Days, a serialized dark comedy about zombies released from the 31st of October 2003, through 2004, stands as one early video podcast. Video podcasts feature video content, and web television series are often distributed this way. Enhanced podcasts, also called slidecasts, pair audio with a slide show presentation built in presentation software. Reference works define an enhanced podcast as "an electronic slide show delivered as a podcast". iTunes built an enhanced feature called "Audio Hyperlinking" that it patented in 2012, and enhanced podcasts were first used in 2006. Fiction podcasts, also called scripted podcasts or audio dramas, use multiple voice actors, dialogue, sound effects, and music. Welcome to Night Vale, a surrealist community radio comedy-horror series from 2012, is widely credited with bringing fiction podcasting to mainstream awareness. The Bright Sessions, created by Lauren Shippen in 2015, earned coverage from outlets including Wired and IndieWire and spawned a trilogy of novels published by Tor Teen. Homecoming, produced by Gimlet Media in 2016 and starring Catherine Keener, Oscar Isaac, and David Schwimmer, was nominated for a Peabody Award. It was later adapted into a Golden Globe-nominated Amazon Prime Video series. The genre has drawn talent like Demi Moore and Matthew McConaughey, plus investment from Netflix, Spotify, Marvel Comics, and DC Comics. Podcast novels, a literary form recorded into episodes delivered online, let writers build audiences before a publisher buys their books. Live podcasts add ticket sales as another way to monetize, with events like the London Podcast Festival and SF Sketchfest hosting performers.

• 8. A Listening World

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  Edison Research estimated that 90 million persons in the U.S. had listened to a podcast in January 2019. In 2020-58% of the population of South Korea and 40% of the population of Spain had listened in the last month. That same year, 12.5% of the UK population had listened in the last week, and 22% of the United States population listened weekly. Much podcast listening happens during commuting. Because of travel restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, unique listeners in the US fell by 15% in the last three weeks of March 2020. Yet fiction podcast downloads moved the other way, rising by 19% early in the pandemic. The audience has spread far beyond the West. Chinese podcast listeners exceeded 220 million in 2023. India has emerged as the third-largest podcast listening market after China and the US, with over 57.6 million listeners. By one count there were over three million podcasts totaling nearly 200 million episodes. The medium that once asked people to download a file now asks a billion of them to watch, and the basic kit to join still amounts to a microphone, a computer or mobile device, and software to edit and upload.