Podcasting and its Apps: Software, Sound, and the Interfaces of Digital Audio

Abstract

Mobile applications for downloading podcasts to smartphones and tablets, or podcatcher apps, are some of the most plentiful in various digital software application stores (app stores). The software features, interfaces, and options podcatchers make available give digital soundworks new functionality, materiality, visuality, and aurality. By collecting and analyzing some of the most popular podcasting applications, this article surveys the affordances and restrictions promoted by podcatching app interfaces. Our research explores how podcast apps promote new instances of listening, arguing that podcatchers reconfigure relationships between listeners and producers, and are also ultimately people-catchers that attempt to aggregate listeners in a fragmented media environment by increasing sonic interactivity, encouraging ubiquitous listening, curating and packaging podcasts as visual media, and emphasizing social features that allow users to share podcasts with each other.