• From FM Pirate to Podcast Pioneer

• Introduction

• “They completely fucked

• up Wi-Fi!” the tall lanky figure yelled with the slightest hint of a lisp I’d

• never

• heard before or even

• seen written about. “Now we have to deal with the asshole carriers”, a

• statement I would understand 24 months later.

• Could this possibly be

• the most impressive person I’ve ever met? I started comparing in my head; Paul

• McCartney was definitely high on the list, but until now the hour long live

• radio interview I did with Quincy Jones on HitLine USA coast to coast had been

• my topper. Sitting in a darkened studio with Q, sharing a bottle of Latour

• while discussing his career producing music from Lena Horne to Michael Jackson

• was mind blowing to me at the time. Speaking of Michael, top 3 coolest

• encounter for sure, but now this guy, who invited me to a private meeting in

• the catacombs of the San Diego conference center during the annual Wall Street

• Journal breakout “All Things D” conference was number one with a bullet.

• “Adam, I love what

• you’ve developed with Podcasting, we’ve been watching for a while now. I made

• sure we gave you as much help as we could. The amount of data you were pushing

• on your MacDrive was crazy!”

• The ‘MacDrive’ he referred

• to is the early consumer ‘cloud storage’ Apple provided in 2004 that I was

• using to host my mp3 files for the first Podcast: The Daily Source Code.

• The person telling me

• this was Steve Jobs.

• Steve’s right hand man

• and now one of the highest executives at apple, Eddy Cue had called me a few

• days earlier and asked if I had time to “meet with Steve”. Eddy took the brunt

• of Steve’s yelling about industry issues before he slid out of the room to

• leave us to our ‘meeting’.

• “I never considered the

• iPod as a radio receiver” he continued, “it’s such a powerful idea that I want

• to incorporate it into iTunes. Are you ok with that?”

• I was taken aback, I

• had nothing to sell since the protocols I was using were open standards of the

• internet, developed by visionaries such as Dave Winer who I had worked with for

• three years prior to this meeting and they were free to use by all for all.

• Yet here was one of the

• titans of Silicon Valley sitting right in front of me, not asking to buy,

• acquire or take anything over. Instead he was asking me to ‘bless’ the

• endorsement of the concept. The moment was intimidating and thrilling at the

• same time. He was asking me to work with his ‘team’ on bringing Podcasting to a

• worldwide audience.

• I suddenly noticed

• Steve had stopped speaking while all this was swirling in my mind, he was

• waiting for my answer. “Fuck yeah! I mean, yes! I’ll even give the team the

• global podcast directory I’ve built so we have a good starting point”.

• For the next 30 minutes

• we talked about production tools, bandwidth constraints and elements of the

• radio industry that I was translating to the laptop production suite. Steve

• listened intently and showed great interest to the manner in which I was using

• his computers. One of the programs I was using at the time to record with

• called Audio Hijack Pro, utilized the Mac’s unique sound handling capabilities

• so you could record the audio of anything playing through your speakers. A

• critical capability at the time.

• “The RIAA (the music

• industry watchdog) keeps giving us shit about that” Eddy Cue chimed in, who had

• re-entered the room. ”Makes it too easy to copy music” Eddy continued. “Stall ‘em” Jobs said. “We have to keep this

• feature working for as long as we can”. Wow, Steve Jobs was now also on my team.

• “What’s the business

• model?” Jobs asked.

• This I hadn’t actually

• considered. Up until that moment, I had been focused on making the whole eco

• system work. I just wanted to broadcast, and the mantra was:

• transmitters?

• We don’t need no stinkin’ transmitters!

• “Advertising is the

• most obvious” I said. “But I see problems down the road because there is no

• gatekeeper, the network is open to all. I don’t think you can monetize the

• network like that at scale”

• I don’t think Jobs

• heard the second part, or didn’t care, because he echoed back “yes, a

• traditional advertising model should work” a statement he reiterated via email,

• in which he introduced me to John Doerr, legendary venture capital investor

• from the prestigious “Kleiner Perkins”. I took that as Steve’s thank you gift.

• 2 hours later Jobs was

• on stage at the conference announcing Podcasts in iTunes and not only credited

• me as one of the inventors, but also started playing one of my recent Daily

• Source Code episodes.

• Now

• Steve, along with journalist heavyweights Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher of the

• WSJ were looking at a computer screen

• while my show intro played full blast in the conference hall. A total throwback

• to families sitting around the wireless after dinner in the 1930’s listening to

• the evening news, or perhaps one of President Roosevelt’s ‘fire-side chats’.

• “Hey

• everybody, welcome to the Dee Ess See” my voice boomed out, “I almost couldn’t

• make the show today because my Mac has been acting up like a mother fucker!”

• The

• crowd and the trio on stage burst out in embarrassed laughter, Jobs grabbed the

• energy expertly and answered a few non sequitur questions from Kara. Not only

• did I know for certain that Jobs knew exactly what he was playing and was going

• for a big launch of this boundary-less new form of radio, but I also now had

• confirmation that Podcasting was here to stay.