(i
POD broad
CAST) An audio broadcast for playback in the computer or mobile device. A podcast is like a radio program that can be downloaded on demand. Although some are actual radio programs such as the news, podcasts cover the gamut, including fiction, education, politics, interviews, documentaries or a magazine with various sections. Thousands of podcasts are downloaded from the Web via an RSS syndication feed or from sites such as Amazon Music, Apple PodCasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.
A media aggregator program ("podcatcher") such as AntennaPod, gPodder and iTunes captures the audio feeds from the Internet for transfer to the player. See
syndication format.
What's a "Pod?"
The "pod" in podcast came from "iPod," the playback device originally targeted. Podcasts are mostly in the MP3 format but can also be AAC. See
iPod,
MP3 and
AAC.
Podcast Everything
Conceived for audio broadcasts, the concept was broadened to include images and video (see
photofeed and
vidcast). Electronic slide shows are created as podcasts (see
enhanced podcast), and "sound seeing" is the audio recording of a person's experiences when traveling. Museums may develop audio tours as podcasts, and students and professors create unauthorized and sometimes controversial narrations of famous works. See
podcast NFT,
autocasting,
punchcasting,
learncasting and
audiobook.