Well OK, it’s just one billion actually.

Just one billion?

Wizzard Media announced today that the company’s podcast hosting units had delivered 1 billion downloads in 2007. That’s a whole lot of episodes, but what does it mean for the future of podcasters and podcast networks, and who gets the credit for moving all those bits?

Wizzard’s Libsyn and Switchpod subsidiaries are podcast hosting companies. They began by selling hosting services to podcasters, and that is still a large part of their business/. Libsyn, in particular, provides an inexpensive, easy-to-use service that’s almost always recommended to podcast newbies, and those faced with sudden spikes in subscribership. That’s because Libsyn charges based on how much storage you use, not for bandwidth. Wizard/Libsyn hosts some of the most popular shows around, but for $5 a month, it can host your grandmother’s podcast, too.

In 2007, the company began inking deals with ad brokers and content providers in a very public way: it had launched a business-focused podcasting service in 2006. suddenly, their press releases started to resemble those of companies who marketed themselves primarily as podcast aggregators or networks.

I think it’s fair to say that credit for the sheer number of podcast downloads delivered by Wizzard companies in 2007 (I personally accounted for several thousand of them) goes to their hosting customers. The Libsyn service, which has been plagued by intermittent service outages and other growing pains, has been a boon to anyone wanting to publish a podcast without worrying about how a popularity spike would affect their personal bandwidth costs. And the company’s participation in the podcasting community, and its DIY spirit, have kept many users loyal, even in the face of hiccups.

It’s also an encouraging sign for podcasting that Wizzard’s announcement was picked up by ReadWriteWeb, then by TechMeme. Podcasting companies and happenings don’t tend to get the attention of the big tech blogs. The 1 billion number may be more of a mile marker than a real turning point in the industry, but so what?

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 10th, 2008 at 9:30 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.