Apple, un brevetto "radiofonico" molto intrigante

Riprendendo una notizia di Apple Insider TechCrunch si sofferma su un recente brevetto depositato da Apple per una tecnologia che consentirebbe di "aggregare" diversi spezzoni presi da podcast differenti in un unico flusso personalizzato. Ecco la spiegazione di TechCrunch:

Apple filed a patent January 9 that describes a method for automatically creating customized podcast mashups from various podcasts.

Here’s the Abstract on the Patent from Apple:

Improved techniques to facilitate generation, management and delivery of personalized media items for users are disclosed. Users are able to influence or control content within a media item being personalized. In one embodiment, personalized media items are podcasts. Users are able to influence or control the content in or with a podcast. In other words, a podcast can be created in accordance with a user’s needs or specifications so that the content within a podcast is customized or personalized for the user.

What Apple is proposing is allowing users to sample/ take portions of multiple podcasts that meet their interests, and download a combined podcast that includes the specified extracts requested. Think like an RSS reader where you get bits from multiple sites, but in audio.
Where it gets more interesting is the way the data is retrieved. The natural assumption is that this aggregates short form podcasts (which it will do as well), but the patent talks about stored podcast characteristics, which may tie-in with Apple’s patent for “Podmaps.” A Podmap is not unlike a sitemap, but obviously for audio, and would specify what was in a podcast when. In theory this new patent could extract audio from a larger podcast per the specs in the Podmap and place that audio in a new custom podcast besides material from other podcasts.
It’s a neat idea, but sampling data from an audio track would bypass things like preroll advertising in a podcast which may undermine the blossoming podcast advertising market. That said if this was to take off, what we would more likely see is more short form niche content that includes the ads, and possibly a downturn in longer podcasts; one hour long interviews don’t make for great sampling in a combined customized podcast as Apple is proposing with this patent.

Commentando la cosa su Cluster 21, un metablog francese, Bernard Girard dice giustamente che questo potrebbe essere un modello di radio del futuro. In pratica, scriveTechCrunch, sarebbe l'equivalente audio degli aggregatori testuali RSS. Un approccio che dovrebbe privilegiare i format audio più concisi, più facili da individuare e riorganizzare. Ma che potrbebbe anche mettere in crisi i modelli di finanziamento dei podcaster indipendenti, anch'essi corteggiati dalla pubblicità online. Chissà se Apple, dopo aver reinventato la musica, riuscirà anche a rivoluzionare il modo di consumare la radio.