The release of iTunes 4.9 a few days ago and its podcatching capability is already having an effect on downloads of For Immediate Release, the bi-weekly business podcast that Shel and I present.
Just looking at the download and referrer stats in LibSyn, our file hosting service, shows a very interesting difference already in which podcatchers download the MP3 files.
As this little graphic shows, which I grabbed this morning, iTunes (the purple slices) is the second most popular podcatcher, after iPodder (the light blue slices). I’ll keep monitoring these stats to see how this looks in the coming weeks.
Having tried iTunes 4.9 as a podcatcher over the past few days, I think it is very good indeed as a dead easy way for anyone to get hold of podcasts and get them onto their iPod. That’s one of the ways in which this podcasting medium will become a mass-market take-up – make it very easy for anyone to get the material.
It’s not perfect by any means, but what podcatcher is?
I’ll say again that podcasting is no fad. Don’t listen to me, though: pay attention to one of the Podcast Godfathers – Dave Winer says the same thing.
(Related: I received an invitation last week to test Odeo, the new service for creating, finding, getting and listening to podcasts. It’s still in beta and I’ll be trying it out and commenting over in my Experimental blog.)