Why podcasting is the new punk

My name is Barney Jameson, and I am addicted to podcasts. There, I said it. The sad truth is that these days if someone snatched my iPhone from my fingers to see what I was listening to they would be less likely to find a demo by a new breaking band than an episode of Movies You Should See. Or Super Happy Fun Time. Or Here Goes Nothing. Or Answer Me This.

This is a strange turnaround considering how musically obsessed I have always been. I love new music, so much so in fact that I once started a national music magazine just so I could talk about it all day. Yet over the last 12 months I’ve started to get the same buzz from finding a new show produced in someone’s bedroom as discovering a new band.

I like to think that part of the reason is my ingrained love of low-fi production values and DIY spirit. Anyone can record a podcast, it takes very little equipment and even less expertise. Far more important than the money spent on setting up is the quality of what the podcaster has to say. It’s the message that matters, not the sheen put over it. Crucially, podcasters are also highly unlikely to make any money out of their efforts, meaning they broadcast simply to be heard. If that’s not punk then I don’t know what is.

Except, there is a problem. To date, podcasting in the UK has never taken off with quite the same gusto as in the States, and the result is that great swathes of the iTunes podcast libraries are filled with… BBC radio shows. This absolutely defeats the object of what a podcast should and can be - independent and free-spirited, the opposite of a show produced by a major corporation.

Sound familiar? It should - the difficulties faced by DIY podcasters in the UK are remarkably similar to those suffered by independent musicians. It’s much harder than it should be to get heard in the first place, simply because the means of distribution are blocked by an insurmountable corporate competitor. There is however a solution, just as there is with independent music - go out find the content.

Or even better, make content of your own. All but one of the shows listed above are produced by a podcast network called Simply Syndicated, a ring of podcasters who produce shows of an exceptionally high standard from their bedrooms and living rooms using the kinds of microphones, mixers and software with which any DV247 reader will already be familiar. What’s to stop you making your voice heard, just as they have?