Podcasts, Audiobooks are quite popular today, for various reasons. But do you know that Podcast was better known as Audioblogging and dates back to 1980?
With the popularity of the Internet and portable audio devices like the iPod, podcasting began to catch its hold from 2004.
Now we can say it’s a Golden Age of Podcast if we look at the stats, it shows a significant increase in the podcast users.
A report recently showed that podcast listeners doubled between 2008 and 2015, and then increased by 23% between 2015 and 2016. In the U.S. alone, there are more than 57 million monthly listeners. With numbers like these, many entrepreneurs feel the urge to start one of their own.
There are many benefits of listening to Podcasts:
Podcasts are a great use of time as it allows you to become more deeply involved in the areas of your choice.
You become more imaginative:
Since the podcast has only listened to mode, while listening to the listener imagines the story in the mind. It creates a high level of emotional involvement in the story. As a result, you become more imaginative. Their imagination is more strong and vivid than who do not listen to podcasts.
Do not hinder your routine
Listening podcast is flexible, as you can listen to podcast doing other activities like walking, driving, cleaning, etc. You can adjust the listening podcast easily in your daily routine and you can listen anywhere, you do not need any specific time and place to listen to a podcast.
Gain different perspectives
Podcasts allow you to listen to stories from different perspectives, you will see the world from a different perspective. Podcasts allow you to hear stories from different voices.
One of my favorite Michael Hyatt: Lead to Win
Audiobooks, is there any difference between podcasts and Audiobooks?
An audiobook is another popular form of listening but now and then the question arises what is the difference between podcasts and Audiobooks?
Many of the times, many of not aware of podcasts and audiobooks.
Though on the surface both the format are the same, both are audio files, downloadable, or listen to offline or stream directly from the hosting services, but the latter is not available for audiobooks.
A podcast is always episodic, meaning that it’s broken into successive episodes that are released on some kind of schedule, which is typically once a day, week, or month.
Audiobooks are never released in an episodic chunk, unlike podcast, you cannot subscribe to an audiobook.
Price:
Pretty much every podcast is available for free, though some podcasts which are popular are going for paid subscription podcasts, that trend is not going to last.
On the other hand, audiobooks are both free & paid – subscription which costs you around from $7 to $27.
There are many free & paid apps for audiobooks read here in 7 Best Apps for Audiobooks
There are many benefits of listening to audiobooks:
You can develop many skills like speed reading, learning a new language, etc.
While learning a new language, it is always beneficial to learn it by listening to it regularly and repeatedly.
It also helps to learn proper pronunciation through a native speaker, but listening, again and again, you can develop good pronunciation.
A Study tiled Imitation Improves Language Comprehension published by Sage had this to say:
“Imitative behavior streamlines social interaction and aids in learning to replicate actions… Post-training measures showed that accent comprehension was most improved for participants who imitated the speaker’s accent.”
Improving language skills can become less stressful, with access to audiobooks and podcasts. bt it has some disadvantages also,
Research conducted by the University of Waterloo titled The way we encounter reading material influences how frequently we mind wander had this to say about the effects of listening to a passage v. reading it in silence.
“Listening to the passage was also associated with the poorest memory performance and the least interest in the material. Finally, within the silent reading and listening encounters we observed negative relations between mind wandering and both memory performance and interest in the material,”
of course, there is nothing wrong with choosing podcasts or audiobooks over reading, as it leads to more convenience.
We all have a choice of how deeply we want to engross ourselves in any medium, taking into consideration advantages and disadvantages.
Final Thoughts
Every new innovation has its own advantages and disadvantages. It’s really up to upon an individual, what his preferences are.
Podcasts and Audiobooks are the latest and modern ways of reading. There is nothing wrong with adopting these techniques over traditional reading.
On the contrary, because of these latest devices, people are continuing to reading otherwise it will be very uncomfortable reading a physical book on commute. You can listen to most inconvenient places like a crowded bus, train, waiting for someone in a coffee shop.
It boosts your creativity by doing two things simultaneously, by ear and one with eyes and hands.
people who read over audiobooks have excellent command over language and pronunciation.
Most audiobooks are read by the author itself, so what’s a better way than to listen from the person who himself wrote it. Many times the author discloses many incidents of a particular incident from the book, which is not possible through traditional reading. It feels like you are interacting with the author itself, which is an invaluable experience in itself.
on a downside, rewinding/revisiting an older chapter is painful on audiobooks. But now many audiobooks come with bookmarks, which makes it easier.
You would miss the feeling of reading an actual book. You would not be able to underline, highlight any particular lines as we do while reading an actual book.
Even though most of the popular titles are available in audio format, there are still many titles that are available only in text format. In other words, the audiobook market is still limited.
So you see it’s a matter of personal preference. What’s your preference, would you like to read a traditional way or on audiobooks and podcasts?
Pl share your experience in the comments below, and if you have any questions or suggestions pl let me know in the comments below. I will be more than happy to answer and guide you in the right direction.