The last decade’s podcast boom has reshaped how millions of people seek out their sports, entertainment, or comedy. Still, the essence of podcasting isn’t exactly a new phenomenon.

Podcasting has its roots and inspiration in several other ideas; it’s just that now, the tools are there for people to connect directly with their audience. Pirate radio championed grassroots ideas and the idea of people creating and running their own radio shows, which is essentially what podcasts are.

But that’s not to say that there haven’t been well-structured innovations and pioneers within the sector who have been able to leverage technology and help podcasting become a titan of 21st-century entertainment and media.

How Pods Utilize Tech

The critical difference is that podcasts can now upload their content to sites like YouTube and Spotify with minimal costs. While we’re not going to sit here and try to claim that there aren’t enough podcasts out there, this shows just how powerful the internet has become. It has rebranded these primitive pirate radio ideas and revamped them into thriving 21st-century ideas.

Online platforms have been able to harness the innovation presented by the internet. It’s not just podcasting that has realized its potential. Everything from streaming movies to casino gaming has changed monumentally due to the emergence of the internet and, more recently, smartphones and tablets.

Although there’s still a demand for people to play casino games on their desktops, smartphones, and tablets, they have become so accessible and in tune with the current gambling market that new casino games must accommodate both types of audiences if they’re going to achieve their maximum reach.

While they obviously have two different types of dynamics, both podcasts and casino games share similarities in that they aim to implement the latest technology and use it to create groundbreaking products.

Important Innovations In Podcasting

Although it’s still such a new sector, the appeal of podcasting hasn’t gone unnoticed, and tech wizzes are already searching for ways to fuse some of the more intriguing tech innovations with the success and model that podcasting has pieced together over the last 10 years.

Podcasts have gone from quirky DIY ideas, with a quickly thrown-together set and some old couches, to selling out arenas worldwide. It’s a fascinating growth – but as with so many budding business ideas in life, the initial boom is soon followed by an embarrassment of riches and market saturation – those looking to cash in on the fad and not look to offer any actual value or entertainment with their podcast idea.

Podcasts started as internet radio ideas in the mid-nineties. However, as YouTube and other streaming sites started to allow podcasters to record and upload their episodes, other innovations started to reshape the sector as we knew it. Podcast shows would clip together screen grabs, react to videos or other viral clips, and fuse their audio and visual capabilities.

By successfully flourishing into an audio and visual product, and with many podcasts now having the audience and popularity to sell out arenas, it became evident that this new medium was not only here to stay but also to replace traditional ideas like radio.

Future Ideas In Podcasting

Given that the market is now so saturated, and you can find a podcast on almost anything, the innovation window is focused on how other technology can help podcasts reach a new level of creativity.

That’s not to say there isn’t a market for podcasts in their traditional format, especially for those podcasters who can channel a good product and find their audience. They’re considered an integral part of content marketing strategies and are quickly becoming a reputable route for big advertisers to try and find their core market.

AI could play a leading role in future innovations, and the news that the legendary late talk show host Michael Parkinson will have a podcast, driven entirely by recordings from his show and AI, is an innovation that few people had predicted. Seeing how well this pans out and is received will be intriguing.

Admittedly, it is a potentially macabre, slippery slope if it becomes a hit, and if podcast producers try it with other late names, then it could be a genie-out-of-the-bottle situation. It’s definitely a case of “watch this space,” we’d say.

Conclusion

It’s hard to know whether podcast fever has plateaued. But given that it’s gone from a small niche of entertainment to sell-out arenas and the world’s top podcasters landing $100 million Spotify deals, plenty of tech innovators and business minds will be looking to shape the sector’s future. AI could play an integral role, or some ideas may be fads.

We might see the rise of niche podcast genres becoming more popular or other podcasters managing to land some of the outrageous sums of money we’ve seen Joe Rogan make over the last five years. Even if the sector has plateaued, it’ll still be a multi-billion dollar one, and within it, there’ll be a world of potential, but who knows how it will look ten years from now? Only time will tell.