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"In case you've been sleeping in a ditch this weekend, a quick catch-up: Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Om Malik, and Jeff Jarvis have all responded to the announcement that Audible is releasing a new podcasting service called Wordcast, which can - among other things - give you accurate stats on who is listening to your podcast.  Mitch Ratcliffe has been defending the Audible format, and explaining its benefits over MP3.  The debate has become pretty heated, and lots of new issues have arisen.\nI also chimed in to ask Does Podcasting Need Better Measurement?  I can now answer that question: it sure as hell does!  Greg Yardley does a great job of explaining the limitations of the MP3 format:\n\nMP3 can\u2019t effectively be used to monetize advertising, because there\u2019s no way to audit listeners. That\u2019s why Dave Winer likes the format...Dave\u2019s absolutely right - advertisers who try to work directly with MP3 podcasts will fail. Take an MP3-monetizing service like Fruitcast, which also inserts ads into audio files - it simply can\u2019t accomodate advertisers who want to pay by the listen. Instead Fruitcast charges by the download, which is a pig-in-a-poke if there ever was one. It\u2019ll make podcasters long for DRM (\u201Dplease, folks, don\u2019t share my show over BitTorrent - download it from Fruitcast instead,\u201D) It bases revenue on an easily-gamed metric (\u201Dyes, my \u2018bot network really does love my podcast - a few more of them each week\u2026\u201D) And performance is completely untrackable (\u201DBoss: Hey, Marketing, how many additional sales did we get from that grand you spent on Fruitcast?\u201D \u201CMarketing: Well, our ad was downloaded 8,000 times\u2026.\u201D \u201CBoss: That\u2019s not what I asked.\u201D) Unless Fruitcast gets itself a raft of 1-800 numbers and starts charging on a cost-per-call basis - my free advice to the company - I think it\u2019s toast.\nAs a corollary, just so we\u2019re clear - when Jeff Jarvis says,\nLet\u2019s say that MP3s could ping their creators when they are played \u2014 at the creator\u2019s option, with full transparency for the listeners. Then the creators could count and control their own stats without having to pay someone to do it via a proprietary system, and report those stats to sponsors. That\u2019s the sort of thing I want to see.\n- he means (maybe without knowing it) \u201CI want an open format that\u2019s not MP3,\u201D since the MP3 format simply can\u2019t be extended to enable accurate listener auditing. It\u2019d have to be revised, and in the revision become something else.\n\nTo sum up: podcasters need to be paid for their content.  MP3 can't track that content effectively, so we either need to adopt a new format, or revise MP3 to a point at which it isn't MP3 anymore.  Greg goes on to say: \"the MP3 format will simply be replaced by a format that either allows DRM (if the monetization is done through a subscription or licensing model) or allows accurate measurement of listens and conversions (if the monetization is done through an ad-supported model).\"  Like Greg, I prefer the ad-supported model and loathe DRM in all its forms.  And I'm also irritated that since there is no open way to monetize podcasts, only big companies with their commercial formats can make money off the medium.\nThis is one of the reasons that there are no big podcast networks out there - there are no effective metrics for advertisers.  In a recent video interview, Jason Calacanis (founder of Weblogs Inc) talks about the potential for a podcast network in the style of current blog networks.  But the problem here is that while blog networks have detailed stats they can show to advertisers (or AOL!), podcast networks can't do the same if they use MP3.  So if we want more entrepreneurial activity around podcasting, we need to adopt a new format or fix MP3 - the sooner the better, as far as I'm concerned.\nPS.  For a good overview of this discussion, check out Tech.Memeorandum."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2005/11/14/if-mp3-wont-do-what-next-for-podcasting/>