podcast

3 July 2026

A podcast is an audiovisual file—originally and most commonly audio only—or series of files that are made available for download to a portable media player. The audio format is usually MP3, and the files are distributed by an RSS feed or similar technology. It is also a verb meaning to create and distribute such files, and a podcaster is one who creates them.

The term is a blend or portmanteau of the Apple iPod audio player and broadcast, [i]Pod + [broad]cast. The first iPod was released on 10 November 2001, and the product line was discontinued in 2022.

The earliest use of the word that I’m aware of is in form podcasting in the Guardian newspaper of 12 February 2004:

With the benefit of hindsight, it all seems quite obvious. MP3 players, like Apple’s iPod, in many pockets, audio production software cheap or free, and weblogging an established part of the internet; all the ingredients are there for a new boom in amateur radio.

But what to call it? Audioblogging? Podcasting? GuerillaMedia?

But use of the term only started to take off months later. On 15 September 2004, Dannie J. Gregoire posted the following to the Yahoo Group iPodder.dev:

I can see there being the desire of users in some instances to be able to easily subscribe and get older posts/episodes/shows (what are we calling these things anyway? How about pode or sode for short?) that no longer appear on the rss feed. […]

I guess one could argue that this is simply an rss/server side issue, and that the "podcaster" (yes, I like making up new words) should be responsible enough to offer a page of seperate feeds of old sodes by month/year/season/etc.

A month later, on 14 October 2004, the Los Angeles Times published an article on the nascent podcast industry titled: “Pirate Radio’s Next Generation: Podcasting, an audio version of the blog made for MP3 players, may be the biggest thing you haven’t heard of.” The article reads, in part:

If you’ve never heard of a podcast, don’t worry. Neither has Google. Type “podcast” into the search engine and it yields results but also asks, “Did you mean broadcast?”

Well, yes, Sort of. Podcasts are broadcasts in only the loosest sense. They don’t use megawatt transmitters to send signals tens or hundreds of miles like terrestrial radio. Listeners can’t hear them live because they are prerecorded sound files; they don’t stream in real time like Internet radio.

[…]

A month ago, the only podcast was “Trade Secrets,” a daily news and technology talk show co-hosted by podcasting’s pioneers: former MTV VJ Adam Curry and software developer Dave Winer.

[…]

Podcasting will also, most likely, branch out to include more music—a prospect that has some podcast enthusiasts excited and others worried.

Curry and Winer claim to have coined the term podcast, but as the Guardian article shows, the term was in the discourse months before they started their podcast in September 2004. And the Gregoire post was made the day before their first podcast. It is probable that Curry and Winer had heard the term but were not conscious that they had when they started using it, but the possibility that they independently coined it cannot be dismissed. In any case, they were not the first to use it.

Podcasting has long since moved out of its “pirate radio” phase. While there is still a plethora of amateur podcasts out there, the professionals have moved into the space, and many radio programs are also available via podcast. While the medium chiefly remains an audio one, many podcasts are now available with video feeds as well. And podcasting has already outlived its namesake, the iPod, and shows no signs of going away soon.

Sources:

Carpenter, Susan. “Pirate Radio’s Next Generation.” Los Angeles Times, 14 October 2004, E4–E5. ProQuest: Newspapers.

Gregoire, Dannie J. Yahoo Groups: iPodder.dev, 15 September 2004. Archive.org.

Hammersley, Ben. “Audible Revolution.” Guardian (London), 12 February 2004, Life 28/1. ProQuest Newspapers.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, December 2008, s.v. podcast, n., podcast, v., podcasting, n., podcaster, n.

Photo credit: Jeremy Foo, 2005. Flickr. Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.