In September 2000, early
MP3 player manufacturer i2Go offered a service called MyAudio2Go.com which allowed users to download news stories for listening on a PC or MP3 player. The service was available for about a year until i2Go's demise in 2001. In October 2000, the concept of attaching sound and video files in
RSS feeds was proposed in a draft by
Tristan Louis. The idea was implemented by
Dave Winer, a software developer and an author of the RSS format. In August 2004, Adam Curry launched his show
Daily Source Code, focused on chronicling his everyday life, delivering news, and discussions about the development of podcasting. Curry promoted new and emerging internet audio shows in an attempt to gain traction in the development of what would come to be known as podcasting.
Daily Source Code was initially directed at podcast developers. As its audience became interested in the format, these developers were inspired to create and produce their own projects and a community of pioneer podcasters quickly developed. iPodderX, released in September 2004 by August Trometer and based on earlier work by Ray Slakinski, was the first GUI application for podcasts. In June 2005,
Apple released iTunes 4.9, which added formal support for podcasts, thus negating the need to use a separate program in order to download and transfer them to a mobile device. Additionally, Apple issued
cease-and-desist orders to many podcast application developers and service providers for using the term "iPod" or "Pod" in their products' names. In February 2006, following London radio station
LBC's successful launch of the first premium-podcasting platform, LBC Plus, there was widespread acceptance that podcasting had considerable commercial potential. UK comedian
Ricky Gervais, whose first season of
The Ricky Gervais Show became a big hit, launched a new series of the popular podcast. The first series of
The Ricky Gervais Show podcast had been freely distributed by the Positive Internet Company and marketed through
The Guardian newspaper's website, and it was the world's most successful podcast for several years, eventually gaining more than 300 million unique downloads by March 2011. The second series of the podcast was distributed through
audible.co.uk and was the first major podcast to charge consumers to download the show (at a rate of 95 pence per half-hour episode). Even in its new subscription format,
The Ricky Gervais Show was regularly the most-downloaded podcast on iTunes.
The Adam Carolla Show claimed a new Guinness world record, with total downloads approaching 60 million, but Guinness failed to acknowledge that Gervais's podcast had more than 5 times as many downloads as Carolla's show at the time that this new record was supposedly set. to represent podcasting in
Apple Podcasts By 2007, audio podcasts were doing what was historically accomplished via radio broadcasts, which had been the source of radio
talk shows and
news programs since the 1930s. This shift occurred as a result of the evolution of internet capabilities along with increased consumer access to cheaper hardware and software for audio recording and editing. As of early 2019, the podcasting industry still generated little overall revenue, although the number of persons listening to podcasts continued to grow steadily. Edison Research, which issues the Podcast Consumer quarterly tracking-report, estimated that 90 million persons in the U.S. had listened to a podcast in January 2019. In 2020, 58% of the population of South Korea and 40% of the population of Spain had listened to a podcast in the last month; 12.5% of the UK population had listened to a podcast in the last week; and 22% of the United States population listened to at least one podcast weekly. The form is also acclaimed for its low
overhead for creators to start and maintain podcasting, merely requiring a microphone, a computer or mobile device, and associated software to edit and upload the final product. Some form of
acoustic quieting is also often utilised.
IP issues in trademark and patent law Trademark applications Between February 10 and March 25, 2005, Shae Spencer Management, LLC of
Fairport, New York filed a trademark application to register the term "podcast" for an "online pre-recorded radio program over the internet". On September 9, 2005, the
United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) rejected the application, citing
Wikipedia's entry on "Podcast" as describing the history of the term. The company amended their application in March 2006, but the USPTO rejected the amended application as not sufficiently differentiated from the original. In November 2006, the application was marked as abandoned.
Apple trademark protections On September 26, 2004, it was reported that
Apple Inc. had started to crack down on businesses using the string "POD", in product and company names. Apple sent a cease-and-desist letter that week to Podcast Ready, Inc., which markets an application known as "myPodder". Lawyers for Apple contended that the term "pod" had been used by the public to refer to Apple's music player so extensively that it falls under Apple's trademark cover. Such activity was speculated to be part of a bigger campaign for Apple to expand the scope of its existing iPod trademark, which included trademarking "IPOD", "IPODCAST", and "POD". On November 16, 2006, the Apple Trademark Department stated that "Apple does not object to third-party usage of the generic term 'podcast' to accurately refer to podcasting services" and that "Apple does not license the term". However, no statement was made as to whether or not Apple believed they held rights to it.
Personal Audio lawsuits Personal Audio, a company referred to as a "
patent troll" by the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), filed a patent on podcasting in 2009 for a claimed invention in 1996. In February 2013, Personal Audio started suing high-profile podcasters for royalties, In October 2013, the EFF filed a petition with the US Trademark Office to invalidate the Personal Audio patent. On August 18, 2014, the EFF announced that Adam Carolla had settled with Personal Audio. Finally, on April 10, 2015, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office invalidated five provisions of Personal Audio's podcasting patent. ==Production and listening==