On Less Popular Podcasting
— Ikhlasul Amal • June 24th, 2007
Why podcasting seems slowly to be used in Indonesia?
Many reasons are speculated out there: bandwidth limitation — either difficulties or expensiveness, more time spent to manage audio files and their attributes, and so on.
Adinda Praditya opened this topics on Teknologia mailing list (in Bahasa Indonesia) for his online survey. Some worried that podcast term itself is very infant to Indonesia Internet users, moreover to use that for blogging medium.
I responded to Adinda’s question on my subjective opinion. Here are:
- voice is for music or talking between me and other persons. Speech to be podcasted or talkshow to be aired are not interesting to me. So, Podcasting is less interesting compared to [text] blogging;
- more difficult navigaton. Tools to forward or back finding important part from podcasting are more difficult;
- less interactive. How can I “post” comment to voice entries?
One blogger was agree to my opinion above.
How about you?
Add a comment 2 comments for this entry.
JaF
Mas, as a person who ’sells’ his voice for a living, :) I beg to differ from some of the above point of view. :)
On “voice only for music and talk”: I can understand how some may prefer music to talk. However, podcasts are not just for -as you pointed out- speech, interviews or traffic reports :)
Imagine audio blogging for the visually impaired, imagine audio book, imagine archiving precious seminars or talks and sharing them to others, imagine bands podcasting their gigs, imagine sharing bedtimes story to hundreds of kids, imagine teachers podcasting their lessons in such a way and distributing it to their students whom I believe are currently crazy about iPod or other sorts of mp3 player or simply imagine a short joke recorded on audio where you can actually capture the emotion of the person telling them (ehm.. ever heard “Mr. Rahard’s Ngebodor Podcast” on his multiply? Not bad at all hehe). There is practically many things human creativity can venture with podcasting.
As a radio broadcaster, I find podcasting a real blessing. Imagine keeping a clipping of a radio program just like cutting a piece of article from the newspaper. Podcasting made that possible and it’s a really a blessing since we no longer can keep listeners glued to a certain broadcast schedulle.
On “Difficulties in Navigation”: I am not quite sure what you mean. But isn’t there such technology called “fast forward”?
On “How to Post Comments to voice entries”: At least there are two ways I can think of. First, it’s common practice that podcasts are connected to blogs as means of promoting and distributing them, and blogs have commenting system, right? Second, you can even leave an audio comment if you like. Odeo.com has a fascinating voice service any podcasters can make use of.
Why podcasting isnt popular in Indonesia?
Bandwith? Yes! Bandwith Limitation is probably one of the cause. However with the growing broadband access service in Indonesia, podcasting should be much more possible. Infact, ever wondered how Indonesian multiply users (and also myspace) were able to upload hundreds and hundreds of pirated mp3 songs to their blogs? Dial up? Naah, I dont think so. :)
More time to manage audio files? Yes its also very much possible especially if it’s one of those complicated podcasts. However, podcast may also be a simple recording uploaded directly to the internet. To me it’s almost similar to uploading an image to our blog. Sometimes you just shoot and upload them directly to the internet. Other times you spend more time editing them using photoshop before uploading it. I think it’s almost the same case with podcasting. It’s all digital technology, right?
Hence, IMHO, the popularity of podcasting in Indonesia may just depend on the following:
Popularity of MP3 players or handphones with MP3 players capability.
Definitely it’s no longer a problem, right? The last time I went to Jakarta, I was so amazed to see how teenagers would spend 10 thousand rupiahs to upload an mp3 song to their handphones and this has eventually turned into a good business (eventhough most — if not all of them — are pirated mp3’s).
I think it’s just a matter of time before they would also upload podcasts to their handphone or mp3 players. Imagine pop bands or one of those teenager idols telling their personal stories and sharing their latest albums or promo exclusively through podcast (..and better yet it’s downloadable through their handphones).
Familiarity with sound editing software:
If one may spend precious time to learn image editing software, then it’s going to be the same case with sound editing, as long as there are strong enough reason to do so.
The more people realize that they can voice their opinions in various creative ways on the net, including using their “real voice”.. I believe there are many people out there who still have problems in expressing themselves through writing, but has no problem in talking. Podcast is definitely for them!
Just my two cents, mas.. :)
June 30th, 2007 at 21:39 pm
Ikhlasul Amal
Thank you, Bung JaF.
First and important: I am not in position to direct all of you to a situation against podcasting. :) So, I thank again that you speak (yes, my honor to label your comment as speech) briefly and descriptive enough about podcasting.
I am agree to your opinion in honor to a common understanding that there is no single media which can hold all users’ need.
Advanced technology in the future will also help, which, — I guess — gets better in handling voice. For today, technology for voice is even left behind image, for example.
Navigation in my statement is about placing bookmarks in several positions, back-and-forth between them, moving up and down based on structure. Suppose I want to mark three important points in a content, or giving emphasize to certain part of content.
July 1st, 2007 at 10:05 am