Hank Horkoff has a Language Podcast Survey over at his (highly recommended) Network Sense blog. The survey doesn’t include English provision, but it still puts things into perspective to my mind.
There isn’t yet a mass awareness of what this medium can do. Podcasting as a teaching/learning tool is a new thing with limited number of providers. The top 2 players produce more than all the rest put together. It’s pretty damn new.
As with Hank, I don’t pretend to be objective about all of this, but I do foresee the new tech as affecting on the audio-book industry, language schools, corporate training, and even the way that languages are taught to kids. The technology of blogging, podcasting, RSS, and the rest is too powerful for that not to happen.
Either way, it motivates the hell out of us to think that we may be leading the charge in the area of language education. (There are brilliant, dedicated people out there who are working really hard on something similar, but in other contexts - bringing the technologies to the US education system, for example.) I’m not sure why, but it makes the whole thing a lot more fun.
We’reing keep our feet on the ground (lest you worry). Hank’s survey suggests that there is, as yet, still a very limited awareness in the mainstream of what can be done through podcasting. At the same time, however, traffic and sign-ups on ChinesePod continue to grow rapidly from day to day. There’s still a ways to go, but the signs are good!
We’re coming up to our first birthday. Where will we be in a year? Well, what do you think?
Ken Carroll
Ken
From Hank’s survey, I am sure it is accurate but it just seems odd how little competition there is.
Outside of CPod can you suggest in any field podcasts that appear to be financially successful as stand alone podcasts? In other words I do not consider NPR podcasting their normal radio programs in this category. I just don’t have time to listen to more than Chinese or just occasionally out of a bout of homesickness NPR.
Mike in Jubei
Mike,
I don’t know of any others that actually have a working revenue model. JapanesePod101 use a model similar to our own - it was essentially based on ours. Apart from that, there isn’t much out there. Most people still seem to think that advertising is the only way to go with podcasting, so they struggle to get the numbers of visits they need. I think that is a very short-sighted view of how powerful this medium cna be.
I hope to talk more about the philosophy behind all this during the birthday week - next week.
Ken Carroll
My prediction for a year from now, what’s in my crystal ball?
The growth will be evening out so you’ll have a better idea of where to invest the most effort without the ground shifting constantly. You will have finished exploring the various markets and be beginning to settle on best bang for buck. Students will start to be a bit less quick to jump in on a whim, but those who do will stay longer, but that trend will only really grow over the third year. And with another year’s experiences to learn from, next year it will become possible to do more with fewer resources. The services you offer will become increasingly targeted at students in places where Internet bandwidth is fast and cheap, which will be reflected in the proportional global use of ChinesePod, and the types of social groups that your students come from.
By this time next year, you’ll either be doing the same thing with Cantonese, or be watching someone else try.
Outside of China, there’s a lot of non Chinese speaking people who live in or beside Cantonese-speaking communities. It’s too far away from China for the one national language thing to have any relevance, and Cantonese is what’s most often heard, or all that is heard, on the local streets. In these places Mandarin is an academic, Chinese business, or overseas holiday language, while there is a broader incentive to learn one’s community’s languages which can still serve those purposes. Also there are oodles more speakers of Cantonese in the world than speakers of the European languages that we are also drawn to for community reasons. That’s the motivation side. On the study side, while there is ample local neighbourhood practice opportunity, there is such a shortage of learning resources and teachers that it’s not a viable option. All it needs is for someone to turn that around with the wave of a microphone, and there’s a whole new global market.
This time next year there will be three things that we are amazed to find have not changed, and two things that we are staggered to discover did change. Ah, but if I knew they will be, it wouldn’t be a surprise, would it.
Most of the podcasts I’ve sampled weren’t really serious. That’s not a swipe at them; they just have different priorities. Maybe they just use language as an adjunct to discussing culture in general. Who knows? And funnily enough — it’s the traditionally popular languages that aren’t really represented very well. There still isn’t a good German podcast, nor Russian … Spanish is a getting there, but they’re still frogging around for a good format. The Italian one is better than most, but the lady who does them has no real language experience. Likewise with Sabastien’s French — a VERY noteworthy and enjoyable effort (especially considering it’s talented one guy!), but ultimately falls short. But we’re standing on the cusp, so I’m COMPETELY optimistic (and biding my time for a Hebrew or Czech podcast
). What a great time to be learning language! I was born 20 years too late.
Auntie:
I think this changes. Here the old generation is mostly Cantonese, too. But the younger Chinese are mostly speaking Mandarin. Chinese University students make the biggest group among foreign students now in Germany. Unlike a couple years ago I here Mandarin now everywhere. I think motivation for Mandarin increases drastically.