Content on Demand

Recently I discovered podcasts. I mean I knew they existed a long time ago but it only recently that I have started to listen to them.

I was curious as to what kind of content there was to download and listen to so I went for a bit of a search. A lot of the casts that I listened to were nothing overly special, but what struck me was that it is nearly all just radio on demand.

As I started my foray into listening to podcast I was sceptical as I have never been a huge radio listener. Usually because I have such a vast music collection and/or the radio program that I want to listen to is on a station I can’t get or at a time I can’t listen to it.
The things about these podcasts is that I can listen to them when ever I want. Too busy doing work or going out to see a friend? No problem, just listen to it another time. Got half an hour to kill, travelling somewhere? Just listen to a podcast!

We are living in a world of content on demand, where we can get what we want when and how we want it. Our radio has become obsolete as we download our radio programs for listening when it suits us, we use magic boxes such as the TIVO to auto record live television at a high quality, we have our iPods which have our entire music collection stored in a tiny box so we are never without a soundtrack to our lives. Our websites are becoming more tailored to our preferences, news sites filtering articles for just the ones that might interest us. Where is it all going?

I have kind of scared myself writing this, I wonder if I am loosing the ability to watch/hear/read new things outside of my current interests. What have I missed out on though my self-indulgent highly-personalised media intake?

For example I don’t even know what is in the charts at the moment and for all I know there could be some really good music in there that I would really like (I doubt it, but…)

So this week is the start of a new resolve to try to be more explorative in what I listen to and watch and thus broadening my horizons.