Episode: 2798
Title: HPR2798: Should Podcasters be Pirates ?
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2798/hpr2798.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 16:58:14

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This in HPR episode 2,798 entitled Short Podcast and Be Pirates.
It is hosted by ITWI and in about 12 minutes long, and Karim an exquisite flag.
The summary is, ITWI waxing nostalgicly on the early game on podcasting, and wonder if
we all sold out.
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Hey there, Hacker Public Radio, this is Nightwise from TheNightwise.com podcast checking
in with another show for HPR.
In the car on my way to a client, it's going to be a short show, I think I'm going to be
there in 10 minutes.
I wanted to shoot something up the flag poll here, I wanted to talk about the state of
podcasting these days, these days.
I sound old because in podcasting terms I am, I've been around since 2004, 2000, and
started producing shows since 2005, and I've been listening to podcasting daily since 2004.
I came across my own archives from shows that I used to download back then and listen
to, which I had burned to a CD, and I've put them on my NAS and I've started streaming
them while at work the last couple of weeks, and I've had a ball listening to old podcast
episodes of the very, very beginning of the podcasting era back in 2005, 2006.
And I have to say, I miss the old days, I don't know, am I showing my age, am I old,
am I, I don't know, but podcasting has matured definitely, but up to the fact we're podcasting
has become a little bit too mainstream media.
And one of the reasons I love Hacker Public Radio, and since I've, why I've been subscribed
for years, is because of the grassroots movement of Hacker Public Radio, you can basically
record a show in the bathroom and chuck it up there and it will get cut down and edited
by Fallen's magic, that's the term for Ken's scripting.
It will get treated by Fallen's magic and it will be produced and sometimes it will sound
like shit and sometimes the content will be weird and sometimes you get a 40 minutes of silence,
which is the most bizarre HBR show ever produced, but every single time you'll get something
fairly unscripted and fairly unprofessional. And I love that, I absolutely do. And there's a reason
for this. When we go back to 2004 and the very very beginnings of podcasting, I'm going to take
you back to 2004 and there was a podcast called The Daily Source Code. The Daily Source Code was
produced by Adam Curry and Ron Bloom, and I think there was another guy who actually invented
the RSS enclosure stuff. But you know, back in the day, podcasting was really really really
early days and really really really grass roots. I have been listening to episodes with The Daily
Source Code where they say like, you know, you can't podcast on a big scale because bandwidth is
too expensive and stuff like that. So, you know, it was a completely different time. But back in
the day when podcasting started up, when I started listening, I mean, nobody had an idea of what
they were doing. The only thing that we actually agreed upon was when you're making MP3 and you shove
it into an RSS feed and it will get downloaded. But how or if you have the bandwidth or what
formats your show needs to be or whatever, that was completely up to you. And one of the things
why this was was because the idea that I got, especially in the beginning of podcasting, was that
it was more like Pirate Radio. Pirate Radio, especially in the Netherlands, was kind of a big thing.
And that's not a coincidence that Adam Curry turned podcasting or aimed podcasting in the
beginning towards Pirate Radio because he was one of the Netherlands most popular Pirate Radio
stations as a young radio DJ of Veronica. The station was called and it was actually broadcasting
from a boat offshore to elude the authorities. And back in the day, radio was really dry and cookie
cut and boring and these radio stations were like, these Pirate radios were like wild and they
would, you know, swear and play rock and roll and it was a totally different. They were legal.
That was the exciting part. And I remember that evolution of podcasting taking off where in the
first shows they would play mashups or he would get sent songs from bands, literally drum bands
recorded on the street. I remember the first sound scene tours that were ever recorded where
all of this was new and was fresh and was experimental. And the one thing that I remember from
those early days was that you talked about your passion and your podcast of course, but you know,
it was not commercial radio. It was not, you know, extremely well produced and outlined and had
a bumper and a full matte and stuff like that. It was just, you know, off the cuff.
If I go listen to podcasts today, I see that sometimes over 60% is basically mainstream media
or mainstream radio shows or production houses that have monetized
podcasting have put ads into it and are pushing it out that way. And I know that you have to do
this. I mean, you need to make money. You need to survive. You need to get a show out there,
but more and more, I am having a really hard time to differentiate a podcast between a talk show
on the radio. It's all well produced. It sounds great. It's completely technical.
Sometimes the content's a bit iffy. Sometimes it's very professional. And I go like, yeah,
but I don't think it's very exciting anymore. That's why I love HBR because HBR is weird and wild
and produced off the cuff and doesn't have a format and is completely unpredictable and sometimes
has shitty quality, but it's a lot more spontaneous. I mean, I don't want a dish podcasting.
It's a fantastic medium. And I'm very happy that streaming hasn't pushed us to decide.
And that it's still a decentralized, distributed medium, not like the big channels,
like, for example, the YouTube's and the Spotify's, who are definitely having a very
strong grip on the content that is placed on their platform. Here, we still host our own
content and have our own RSS feeds. And it is the distributed nature, the decentralized nature
that still gives podcasting that freedom. But I always am a little saddened by the fact that,
you know, sometimes we just want to make it too commercial. And I know that you know,
it's about listeners and subscribers and you want to make it as professional as possible,
but to really, really have to. I mean, if I want something that is completely well-produced and
that is so cookie cutter-fined, do I not listen to a mainstream radio program for,
you know, for as long as they will still exist, because, you know, that medium is going out
the window as well. But they are gearing towards podcasting as ways to distribute their content,
while podcasters, old-school podcasters, are gearing towards a radio style of producing stuff,
which is really weird. I mean, if we take a look at Leela Port, he's basically a recycled
radio TV host that, you know, got kind of put to decide and made his own thing. And now he is
running kind of an internet media station. It's really, really weird. I mean, everybody on the panel
is a journalist and basically you just have a spoken newspaper by the main media. So,
what's my point? My point is to set you thinking. Maybe, you know, you can give me or five cents in
the comments about whether or not podcasting will keep its momentum. And whether that will be either
by the fact that main media are going to jump on it, and it's all going to be very cookie cutter
and professional and very, very, you know, well-produced and predictable, or because it's decentralized
and wild and unpredictable. So, what's your take? You are possibly a listener to HBR, and everybody
who's a listener to HBR is a potential host. So, you as well are a, you know, potential podcaster.
What do you think a podcast should be like? Should it be cookie cutter and well-produced and what
have you? Or should it be wild and, you know, rough and independent and unpredictable and not
like mainstream media? That is the question that I post here. Because the question, the other
question that I have is if we are all going to become radio stations or sound like radio stations,
is podcasting still going to be a success? Because, you know, then you can just as well start
streaming it or debate the main platform's takeover and, and, you know, the decentralized
nature will go away, just like it is with, with YouTube. We are completely, completely dependent
on YouTube. If YouTube decides that tomorrow they're not going to host any review videos from
Huawei anymore, they just say, we're not going to do it anymore. And boom, you lose your entire
distribution. And a lot of content producers lean towards YouTube because it's, it's easy,
it's cheap. They can, they can reach a lot of listeners and basically they can even make a
buck off it. But it's YouTube. It's the channel that decides. They are still, you know,
working for the man. And I say this literally because, you know, that used to be Adam Curry's
tagline, you know, stick to the man, you know, be independent, do your own thing, become your own,
you know, boat hosted somewhere off the coast of the Netherlands broadcasting from
wonky antenna and, and, and saying, and swearing and saying nasty things because you can't. So,
yeah, that's the, that's the question that I would like to post to you guys today. What should
you, what, what do you think that Pascal podcasting should be like? So tell me, tell me in the comments,
record your own show, challenge me, prove me wrong, or at least tell me what you think in your own
way. What should podcasting be like? Are we all selling out because we all want to be like mainstream
shows or like twit? Or should we be more like part radio, radio veronica, completely wild,
independent and unpredictable? What do you think?
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