<P> Podcasting, first known as "audioblogging", has its roots dating back to the 1980s . With the advent of broadband internet and portable digital audio playback devices such as the iPod, podcasting began to catch hold in late 2004 . Today there are more than 115,000 English - language podcasts available on the internet, and dozens of websites available for distribution at little or no cost to the producer or listener . According to one survey in 2017, 42 million Americans above the age of twelve listen to podcasts at least on a weekly basis . </P> <P> Before the advent of the World Wide Web, in the 1980s, RCS (Radio Computing Services), provided music and talk - related software to radio stations in a digital format . Before online music digital distribution, the MIDI format as well as the Mbone, Multicast Network was used to distribute audio and video files . The MBone was a multicast network over the Internet used primarily by educational and research institutes, but there were audio talk programs . </P> <P> Many other jukeboxes and websites in the mid-1990s provided a system for sorting and selecting music or audio files, talk, segue announcements of different digital formats . There were a few websites that provided audio subscription services . In 1993, the early days of Internet radio, Carl Malamud launched Internet Talk Radio which was the "first computer - radio talk show, each week interviewing a computer expert ." It was distributed "as audio files that computer users fetch one by one ." </P> <P> The development of downloaded music did not reach a critical mass until the launch of Napster, another system of aggregating music, but without the subscription services provided by podcasting or video blogging aggregation client or system software . Independent of the development of podcasting via RSS, a portable player and music download system had been developed at Compaq Research as early as 1999 or 2000 . Called PocketDJ, it would have been launched as a service for the Personal Jukebox or a successor, the first hard - disk based MP3 - player . </P>

Who makes podcasting popular and how was it launched