iTunes embraces podcasting

The new version of iTunes was released today, and for the first time, it bundles in support for podcasting. Podcasting is one of those technologies that doesn’t seem like a big deal until it’s actually in your life, sort of like TiVo and other digital video recorders. It operates off the same principle — time-shift the content you want to hear until when you can hear it — but works with audio feeds.

iTunes’ list includes a lot of stuff I was already aware of (I’m a huge fan of the news and especially the entertainment content from coolest-station-ever KCRW, for instance), but hopefully this will open up a lot more people’s ears to podcasting and, in turn, the popularity (and Apple’s mainstreaming) of podcasting will help get the music licensors to the table to come up with some way the KCRWs of the world can podcast amazing shows like Morning Becomes Eclectic, Metropolis and Chocolate City, which for now are too expensive to bother with, due to royalties issues.

Even if you don’t have an iPod, which is one of life’s greatest pleasures, do download the new version of iTunes and check out what all the fuss is rightly about. So far the interface is a little clumsy, but Apple has a genius for design, if nothing else, and these corners will get sanded off ASAP, I expect. (Why no back/forward buttons on the podcast section of the store? How the heck do you get downloaded podcasts from your computer onto your iPod — it doesn’t work the same way as moving songs over.)

If you do, I promise to come back here on Friday with the Top 100 songs played on my iPod in the first six months of owning it. It’s a pretty cool list, if I do say so myself, and I do.

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