Music

Ten of the best independent podcasts

The key to the potential success of podcasting is the fact that nearly everyone can tune in and produce content. Nelson describes the download phenomenon as having three layers. ‘The first tier is big broadcasters like ourselves who are using podcasting as an alternative distribution means, that’s all. Then there’s a second tier of commercial new entrants, from Ricky Gervais to the Sun to the Telegraph and smaller organisations who are using audio to get their message across in different ways, sort of an audio direct mail. Then the third tier is the grass-roots podcasters. Basically anyone with a decent computer can now have a stab at making radio, publishing it and finding an audience. If and when the rights situation with music gets sorted out, there is going to be another explosion in this area, but it will necessitate some kind of digital rights management, which is going to make music-based podcasts less accessible and universal than speech ones have been, because they’re not going to be free. And I can guarantee that Ricky Gervais’s paid-for podcast is going to be vastly less popular than his free one.’

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As podcasts become commercialised, they may succumb to a divide that already exists between the big industry players and the little fish further down the food chain. This is most obvious in digital radio (DAB). Although we have dozens of digital stations to choose from in London, many are simply clones of what’s already available on FM, albeit in a crisper form. Unlike the case with TV, there is no plan to switch off the analogue signal, which means that these parallel services could run side by side indefinitely. Pirate radio stations, which might have hoped to go legit on newly liberated FM frequencies, have instead noticed a clampdown on their activities, with Ofcom setting up a new field operations division to investigate the link between illegal broadcasters and serious crime. Ofcom insists that the pirates are not the plucky underdogs of popular imagination but profitable money-makers that can turn over £5,000 a week in cash from advertising while exploiting hopeful young DJs, many of whom pay stations for the privilege of working for them. Some of the brightest wannabes have concluded that internet radio, which is legal and open to anybody, is the way to go in the future.

It’s possible the democratic nature of the internet will see it surpass digital radio before the latter has really got off the ground. Even a pioneering little arts station like Resonance FM (see Making Waves) – currently operating in London under a hard-won five-year community FM licence and forbidden to make a profit – can’t get its foot in the digital door, no matter how much it would like to.

‘Of course we’d be interested in Resonance going digital, but only when it becomes viable,’ says station manager Richard Thomas. ‘I would say there’s a bias in terms of giving bandwidth to stations that are commercially successful anyway. I haven’t really investigated the politics of it too much, but they’ve probably sewn it up for themselves because they’re aware that they’re under threat from independent content. I don’t think digital is having much of an impact, personally, because I don’t think there’s a great deal of stuff on offer. I think it’s dull. It would be great if digital radio worked in the same way as the internet did, where you could listen to a Radio Tokyo broadcast or whatever, but it’s just not that liberal in terms of bandwidth allocation at the moment.’

The allocation of digital bandwidth is terrifically complicated, but Thomas is broadly correct in his assumption that it’s something of a commercial carve-up. The DAB system – except the BBC’s output, of course – is basically controlled by media heavyweights like GCap (the UK’s largest commercial radio company, which owns Capital, Xfm, Classic and others) and Emap (which started life as a magazine publisher but has been noticeably enthusiastic about expanding into other media). Individual stations – even niche ones like OneWord or rock station The Arrow – have to pay for their slice of the bandwidth pie, so it’s fair to say that profitability is close to the hearts of all concerned. ‘What we’re seeing is that radio is becoming very much about strong brands,’ says Neil Stock, head of radio planning and licensing for Ofcom. ‘Emap in particular. All its brands have now been turned into radio stations on digital – Smash Hits (even after the demise of the magazine), Q, Mojo, Kerrang!. Most of them are also available on Sky and Freeview, and then there’s the internet. You can get all these services on all kinds of different platforms now. Radio, much more than television, is really leading the multimedia world.’

In evolutionary terms, TV may be splashing around in the primordial soup, but it is catching up. Video podcasts – or, if you can bear it, ‘vodcasts’ – are catching on as more people upgrade to video iPods, and BT is about to launch a mobile phone that has digital radio on it and TV. Yet TV will never match the hands-free portability of radio and its stars will always crave the intimacy of audio. Jonathan Ross’s Saturday morning show on Radio 2 has brought him a new audience, while Chris Evans, returning from his post-Virgin, post-Billie Piper sabbatical, quickly signed up too. It was the perfect way for him to rebuild his fanbase and hone his material; naturally it has also spun-off into a podcast.

‘Radio has always been more pioneering than the video industry,’ says Simon Nelson. ‘Video on demand is still in its infancy; we launched the BBC Radio Player three-and-a-half years ago. We’ve now been offering a week’s worth of programming on demand for quite some time and learning an awful lot from it. And it’s not necessarily because we’re really good and got the idea first – well, there’s a tiny bit of that – it’s actually because radio as an industry can be more nimble.’

From the commercial big-hitters conquering DAB to the new ultra-local community stations that have just gained their licences, London is the vibrant centre of this new audio universe. As Ofcom’s Neil Stock puts it: ‘If you’re someone who likes radio, it’s very doubtful that you won’t find something that you want to listen to in London.’