Music

Ten of the best independent podcasts

There’s a seismic shift happening in radio and, as ever, Londoners are leading the way. With the gumption and adaptability typical of city-dwellers, we’ve been early adopters of digital and internet radio since their inception, but it’s with the advent of podcasting that we’ve found a medium seemingly tailored specifically to our needs. Simon Nelson, controller of BBC Radio and Music Interactive, puts it bluntly. ‘The reason downloading radio works so well in this city is the tube,’ he says. ‘Because you cannot pick up live radio. For many Londoners travelling to work, live radio just isn’t part of their experience. If they go on the tube they’re in an environment where they can’t pick the stuff up. Downloading and podcasting are perfect for that. I have to keep berating my team not to assume the whole country is like that. They get all enthusiastic about how great podcasting is when you’re commuting, but I have to remind them that a lot of people outside London actually drive to work.’

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In recent years just about every development in technology has been heralded as a vital tool of democracy but, in fact, it’s audio that has carved out new pathways for global communication. In London, where nine out of ten of us listen to the radio regularly, there are well over 100 stations available, if you include the nine new local community licences that Ofcom awarded last month, the 50 or so broadcasting on digital and the 60-odd pirates on FM. On the internet, meanwhile, thousands of broadcasters pour out opinions, politics and music from every country in the world. And, with the advent of podcasting, the choice of listening options is expanding hourly.

To understand the speed at which the industry is developing, consider Ricky Gervais. Say what you like about him, he’s not a man to waste an opportunity, and he grasped radio’s potential from the start. He was a complete unknown when he signed up to do a show for the fledgling indie station Xfm when it launched in 1997. His fame was barely beyond cult status by the time he returned to the station – which had since been swallowed by Capital – in 2002. The new show, which also featured Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington, ran successfully for two years, off and on, and when the trio came back for a six-week run last year, Xfm decided to make it available to download, before most broadcasters (apart from the BBC) had grasped the concept. The podcast quickly got an international listenership, especially in the US, where people were picking up on ‘The Office’ after its 2004 Golden Globe triumph.

Then, at the end of last year, Gervais announced that he was going it alone, creating a d podcast independently, but using the Guardian website, with its ready-made American audience, as a distribution platform. ‘I want to do a radio show where I can say what I want, when I want, for as long as I want, and that’s free for anybody who can be bothered to listen anywhere in the world,’ he said at the time. This utopian vision didn’t last long. ‘I’ve been a fool,’ he commented, half-jokingly, earlier this year, when he heard that his show was downloaded by 2 million people and had earned a place in the Guinness Book Of Records. He swiftly inked a deal with Audible.co.uk and his podcasts will now sell at $2 each.

Graham Hodge, station controller of Xfm, is not slow to grab his share of the credit for sparking off the podcasting phenomenon in the capital but is surprisingly lukewarm about its future generally. ‘Ricky’s show is a perfect example of when podcasting really works,’ he says, ‘but I think if he’s not a one-off then he’s certainly one of only a handful. A big problem that podcasts have is that, by and large, they’re not able to include music. We’ve done a few that do include music and they’ve done very well, but until that becomes the norm, it’s only going to be a niche proposition. The people who want speech radio as opposed to music radio already form a relatively small group and then, if you factor in the relative complexity of the technology, you’re into a pretty niche proposition.’

The reason music is a problem for podcasters is that no one has yet worked out a way of paying the publishers (and ultimately artists) royalties for their work. Yet Simon Nelson does not believe that this will stand in the way of podcasting’s future. ‘I think that might be wishful thinking from some in the industry who hope that podcasting might go away,’ he says wryly. ‘I’ve just been playing around on the net today with a few different podcasts and there is enormous creativity going on with speech audio. Podcasting is a massive shot in the arm for speech radio. From our point of view, we are enjoying the revitalisation of BBC programme brands like “From Our Own Correspondent” or “In Our Time”, which are becoming unlikely heroes of the podcasting revolution and finding completely new audiences who would never have dreamt of listening to things like that in the past. Of the new entrants, some are dire, but some of them are really, really good. I think podcasting is here to stay.’