How Podcasts Became a Seductive and Sometimes Slippery Mode of Storytelling

For me it was just subscribe on iTunes, my PC automatically downloaded new episodes and since I charged and synced my iPod using my computer daily I was usually up to date.

Decade is a little bit too late, I’d say first years are about 15 years ago.

I had a Rio Carbon. Procedure was: Download podcasts to your computer, drag and drop the files to the player just like with any external drive.

I thought the Rio was a great little player it's a shame Apple wiped the field of competition so quickly.

How laborious likely depended on your OS. iTunes on a Mac = extremely easy (just sync it like all your other music).

But I remember getting some MP3s to show up on my MP3 player using a Desktop would sometimes be stressful (some files played nice, some didn't..) And when I got an iPod, iTunes and Windows would occasionally attack each other outright

I wouldn't call the process laborious but it was manual and that meant that you had to hook it up regularly to get new content. I definitely started listening to way more podcasts after I got a good data plan and an iphone.

I still do that. I plug in my MP3 player with USB, download the audio files I want to listen to, and then copy them to the MP3 player's file system. I don't see the problem.

That is about when I was started as well, and it while it seems annoying compared to today's standards I remember it being about par for the course.

The other audio I listened to at the time was either downloaded/burned or purchased. I even bought a few audiobooks, which came on multiple discs. How barbaric!

You could subscribe to them in iTunes at least as far back as 2004, they'd sync automatically when you attached your iPod. Hardly any extra effort as you'd probably plug in every couple days or so anyway.

This guy apparently: http://toddstjohn.com/

A good app can greatly change behavior. I was an avid listener of This American Life, partly to their decent iOS app, bu quickly fell out of the habit when it became unmaintained. I still listened to podcasts by going to webpages manually. But I only recently tried using the Podcast app and it has had a huge change on how much more I listen to podcasts.

> And whole article does seem like the old media('Gatekeepers are good' is a common theme at New Yorker) whining against the new.

I got the same vibe. The "manipulative" implications the author is making could be applied towards print journalism just as accurately.

Although I happen to agree with you that podcasts were successful before being added to itunes, Apple's adoption of something seems to validate it for the mainstream. Google had tap-to-pay years before it showed up on Apple devices. Now that it's been made ubiquitous by inclusion on recent Apple phones many point-of-sale terminals read 'Apple Pay' and I've had more than one cashier question whether it works with non-Apple devices. LOL.

> podcasts being popular without Apple having to release an app for it.

Apple was arguably the MOST important distributor of podcasts, given that they had millions of devices (including iPods - you could download/sync podcasts onto the classic iPod) in the market.

I am also not picking up the "old media is better" vibe here. Non-fiction/investigative podcasts need quality control, editorial control etc. It's hardly a gatekeeper thing.