“It’s a more fractured marketplace,” says Patrick Reynolds, EVP of Marketing at Triton Digital, a company that provides streaming and ad services to radio stations. “People can pick and choose how they consume this particular kind of content.” And with the proliferation of services like Pandora, Spotify and Slacker, which let people customize audio content to their whims, it seems as though this century-old medium is more popular than ever.

Crossing over

When podcasting took off in the mid-2000s, the idea was to provide downloadable audio content online so that listeners didn’t have to tune into a radio station at a specific time.

This American Life (TAL), the popular public radio program hosted by Ira Glass, came to the streaming and podcasting party earlier than most (its first stream dates back to 1998), and it’s now one of the most downloaded podcasts in the world.

Eventually, TAL was adapted for TV on the premium cable network Showtime. Though the televised series was short-lived, it can still be purchased on DVD or via iTunes. TAL’s website also offers CDs, web streams, mobile apps and mp3 downloads. What TAL does especially well is make its program available in as many formats as possible.

Another example of an audio program crossing over to multiple platforms is The Ricky Gervais Show. Originally a free podcast on The Guardian’s website, it featured hilarious banter on science and religion between Gervais, co-creator Stephen Merchant and seemingly simple-minded producer Karl Pilkington, who became the show’s star.

Using the existing audio, HBO developed an animated version of the podcasts in 2010, illustrating some of the absurd scenarios the three men discussed. The same year, Gervais developed the Sky1 TV series An Idiot Abroad, with Pilkington making off-kilter observations during his world travels. Essentially, it’s a riff on the original podcast’s running joke: Pilkington himself.

Over in Canada, it took host Jian Ghomeshi’s on-air showdown with actor Billy Bob Thornton to make CBC Radio One’s daily variety show Q an international sensation. It helped that the video made it on Perez Hilton – but that wouldn’t have happened without Q’s YouTube channel.

Like many non-Canadians, Reynolds hadn’t heard of Q until the infamous video surfaced. Q exemplifies Reynolds’ assertion that radio content should be “agnostic to delivery mechanism.”

Whether the radio experience is delivered on-air, online, via YouTube, a blog or a podcast, what matters is the strength of the idea, the passion of the people powering it, and its relevance to an engaged community.

Choose your own radio

Music services like Pandora, Spotify or Slacker are a big part of radio’s enduring appeal. While some critics are quick to dismiss such services as “not radio,” saying they’re the “audio equivalent of solitary confinement” or glorified “playlists,” media consultant and author Mark Ramsey is less cynical.

“Pandora’s not a perfect match to what a radio station does,” Ramsey says, “but that doesn’t mean it’s any less fulfilling of the need that people go to radio for.”

Slacker lets you listen to pre-programmed playlists or create your own

What people go to these music services for is the ability to tailor the content to their tastes. With Pandora, you create a “channel” by entering a song or artist to generate a stream of similar music. On Spotify, you can create playlists from an exhaustive selection of music, then share those playlists with other users or your Facebook friends.

Slacker allows you to listen to pre-programmed stations or create your own based on your musical preferences. It also includes song lyrics, news and sports content.

All three services operate on the “freemium” model; that is, users can upgrade to an ad-free version by paying a small subscription fee. Though Pandora hasn’t revealed how many of its 100 million users pay for its service, Spotify counted 2.5 million paying subscribers in November 2011, prompted in part by its Facebook integration.

It proves that, unlike print content – the jury’s still out on the newspaper paywall experiment – people are happy to pay for a customized radio experience.

Branded and satellite radio

The three big music services point to a trend towards commercial-free radio, but Custom Channels is in the business of creating radio stations for brands. When you walk into a Whole Foods grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, for example, you won’t hear elevator music. Instead, you’ll discover alternative mixes that reflect the brand’s progressive image. At Floyd’s Barbershop, you’ll hear a selection of oldies and classic rock, with a stream available on the company’s website.

Then there’s satellite radio, which once seemed poised to be another victim of the internet. Sirius XM radio (originally two competing companies) once faced skepticism because of its subscription-based, ad-free model. But the brand has consistently delivered exclusive high-quality content, which has secured it a relatively small, but committed listenership.

Willie Nelson hosting his radio show, photo via Facebook

From the beginning, Sirius’ programming has been helmed by talented, celebrity DJs like Howard Stern. Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour was something of an enfant terrible during its three-year run, with listeners relishing Dylan’s deadpan delivery and encyclopedic knowledge of music, while Willie Nelson’s Willie’s Roadhouse had a similar impact on the country music scene.

Sirius’ recently revamped mobile app is getting great reviews for its enhanced user experience, as well as its live and on-demand functions.

Radio reborn

That sort of adaptability has allowed Sirius to stay relevant in an increasingly fragmented radio world. Indeed, all the “death of radio” prophets of the last decade may have simply confused fragmentation with weakness.

But all these examples suggest that, on the contrary, radio is in the midst of an exciting renaissance – and all renaissance movements are marked by versatility and big ideas. There’s no shortage of either in radio land.

Photo by CC Chapman via flickr

What led you to Iambik?

Iambik comes out of my experience as the founder of LibriVox, a project that gets volunteers to record public domain books, and gives them away for free.

It seemed to me that some of the ideas we had at LibriVox could be applied to works that are in copyright, in a slightly different model.

With Iambik we’re clearly more concerned with producing professional-quality audiobooks, and of course we won’t be giving audiobooks away, we’ll be selling them – through our own site, and through partners such as Audible, eMusic and Overdrive.

LibriVox gave me the insight that publishing ought to happen from the web first, and grow from there, rather than have the web as a kind of add-on to a physical business.

I suspect that’s where all book publishing will go: web and digital first, with the physical incarnations of books happening only for a subset of books that, as Frank Chimero says, “deserve to be objects.”

Do you think audiobooks are getting more popular?

Yes, the top book apps in the iPhone app store are consistently audiobooks. I think that’s indicative of a change, where younger, more tech-savvy people are discovering audiobooks.

People have less time to read these days, and if they can do part of their “reading” via audio – in a convenient, cost-effective way – then I think we’ll see significant growth, or at least growth of new audiobook listeners.

Plus, the stigma that went with audiobooks is starting to fade. No one has time for stigmas any more. At least not about the formats people choose to get their “bookiness” from.

What sorts of publishers will Iambik be dealing with?

We’re talking to all sorts. We’ve started with independent literary presses because they’re really in line with our vision of publishing. Our next collection will be crime books, again with some great indie presses.

We’re also talking to the Big Six – really any publisher with good books they’d like to make into audio. We’re keen on talking to them and they seem to be interested in talking to us.

So mostly North American publishers? Do you see this project branching out internationally?

To date we’ve only worked with North American publishers, but we will be working with some UK publishers too. And eventually, we’d like to make audiobooks in every language.

You’ve described Iambik’s publishing model as very “webby”. Can you explain how you will work with publishers, authors and producers and the reasons why you’ve decided to structure yourself this way?

Well, I think we are a lot closer to the structure for many digital publishing schemes – the real difference is with traditional print publishing.

The big difference with Iambik is firstly that we’re not paying out any big advances, and second, we’re going to connect as much as possible directly with customers online.

Our hope is that narrators and publishers will want to work with us because we do a good job of finding good books to record and getting people in front of them.

Do you think dealing directly with customers online will be your advantage?

I think a publisher’s job is to connect content producers with the people who will enjoy that content, and vice versa. And so by definition, I think that publishers need to connect directly with customers. If they don’t, I believe they will have a very hard time, going forward. This is the big shift of digital.

At the same time, the existing online distribution channels do something really important: They aggregate audiences. So we will sell directly to our customers, but we’ll also spread our content through whatever distribution channels we can.

We’re starting with three distribution channels: OverDrive, eMusic, and a third one we can’t mention until it is finalized.

But I think in the digital age, producers of content need to be everywhere the people are: That goes back to the importance of connecting people and content. You go to the people and bring them your content, and hope that the people start coming to you to find your content.

In a recent article, you wrote that “thinking of eBooks as just another way to consume a book lets the publishing business ignore the terror of a totally unknown business landscape and concentrate on one that looks at least similar in structure, if not in profits and losses.” What do you think will be the real force of change in the publishing industry?

I think the real force of change will be the tension around what readers wish to do with (digital) books once they get them. In the old days, book publishers paid writers and editors and printers to make books, and then sent them off to retailers, and that was the end of it.

Publishers are trying to maintain that structure with eBooks. We make the books, send them to Amazon or Kobo, consumers pay $X for the books, and everyone is happy.

But there are two things happening. Digital means that anyone who really wants your book for free can get it for free. And digital means that consumers expect to be able to do all the things we expect out of digital goods: ship them around, chop them up, search them, annotate them, comment on them, share them.

So, on the one side, the clarity of what consumers are willing to pay for, when, and how much is up in the air. On the other side, what publishers are expected to provide or support is going to look very different than it does now.

So my answer is: It’s going to be a rough ride for book publishers in the next decade. But, what will win out in the end is what always wins out: good books that people care about. I don’t think we have to worry about those.

Robert Scoble is one of the world’s leading evangelists of all things digital. Previously with Microsoft, Scoble has also worked with Fast Company among others. He is perhaps best known as a blogger: millions around the world read it every day. And one of Scoble’s most famous creations is his starfish, a great, colorful visualization of the amorphous social-media landscape. Inspired by Brafman and Beckstrom’s “The Starfish and the Spider,” Scoble emphasizes the online media ecosystem’s decentralized and interconnected nature. Below, we dissect the starfish, laying out each medium’s strengths and weaknesses and examining which players are converting each into eyeballs and dollars.

Video

Strengths:
youth audience, viral, multiple senses, easy to embed, creativity, control over message
Weaknesses:
production costs, online video not as popular with adults, oversaturation
Services:
YouTube, Google Video, Kyte, Seesmic, Hulu
Conversions:
Politicians and interest groups use video to spread the word. Aspiring musicians and filmmakers can market themselves on the cheap. Grey-market entrepreneurs who provide links to TV shows and movies are making a killing off ad sales.
Who’s making money?
Let’s face it: YouTube will never be the cash cow Google expected it to be. And how annoying are those commercials networks lace their videos with? There is hope, however, in sites such as Hulu, where the big boys get a share of the pie.

Photo

Strengths:
“worth a thousands words,” cheap, easy to share across platforms
Weaknesses:
static, copyright confusion
Services:
Flickr, Zooomer, SmugMug
Conversions:
Citizen journalism sites such as Gothamist and CNN’s iReport are thriving off our Flickr photos.
Who’s making money?
Flickr has stayed afloat with its premium subscriber model but Yahoo suitors such as Microsoft may think they can squeeze more money out of the photo-sharing leader.

Blog

Strengths:
personal, interactive, multimedia, free and easy to use
Weaknesses:
Casual tone can lead to political and corporate gaffes. Many companies are leery about opening themselves to criticism through comments or linking. “Post or die”: maintaining a popular blog is a full-time job.
Services:
WordPress, Blogger, TypePad
Conversions:
Google, Wal-Mart, Amazon, McDonald’s and Whole Foods are among the most powerful corporations with successful. – and surprisingly readable – corporate blogs.
Who’s making money?
Blogs are the lifeblood of what Internet evangelist Jeff Jarvis calls the new “link economy.” According to a Wall Street Journal story, more Americans earn a living today from blogging than firefighting or computer programming (although some bloggers have questioned the Journal’s accounting).

Events

Strengths:
Welcome to the real world.
Weaknesses:
“If you build it, they will come”—except when they don’t.
Services:
Zvents, Evite, Eventful, Upcoming, Facebook
Conversions:
Scoble likes to talk about an unofficial Obama rally that was organized online and drew more than 4,000 supporters – plus the future President.
Who’s making money?
Depends on the cover charge.

Collaborative Tools

Strengths:
internal efficiency, transparency
Weaknesses:
Expensive and buggy. Will our privacy evaporate in a cloud?
Services:
Zoho, Zimbra, Google Docs
Conversions:
Google’s ever-evolving collaboration tools build brand loyalty (not to mention dependency).
Who’s making money?
By keeping its programs in perennial beta mode, Google can scrap unprofitable – or just plain crappy – creations while saving face. What happened to Vista Beta, Mr. Gates?

Wikis

Strengths:
Crowdsourcing, transparency, unabashed geekiness: Wikis are the coolest social media on the block.
Weaknesses:
The hazards of democracy: Wikis are fair game for critics, pranksters and sh*t disturbers.
Services:
Pbwiki, Twiki, Wetpaint
Conversions:
Wikipedia, anyone?
Who’s making money?
Wikis are the NGOs of the Internet economy. They won’t make money, but the geeks won’t let them fail.

Audio

Strengths:
intimate, easy and cheap
Weaknesses:
Radio is so 1930s.
Services:
BlogTalkRadio, Odeo, podcasts
Conversions:
The Quick and Dirty Tips podcast network just keeps growing.
Who’s making money?
Even public-radio producers have embraced mid-podcast advertising, which is somehow less annoying than video ads (how can you not buy a mattress endorsed by Garrison Keillor’s soothing baritone?)

Email

Strengths:
personal and timely
Weaknesses:
spam!
Services:
MediaPost, AWordADay, TPM Daily Digest and other so-called Bacn.
Conversions:
Six months after the election, President Obama is still tapping into his campaign e-mail trove to sell himself to the American people.
Who’s making money?
We’re so used to ads in our inbox, who would mind a few more?

SMS

Strengths:
even more personal, even more timely
Weaknesses:
except for when cell-phone carriers fail to deliver on time
Services:
Communications Channel
Conversions:
Obama announcing his running mate via SMS was a neat idea, but the cat was out of the bag hours before that early-morning text.
Who’s making money?
As if the Verizons and Videotrons of the world needed another revenue stream.

Microblogs

Strengths:
niche, timely, personal
Weaknesses:
limited audience, time-consuming
Services:
Twitter, Jaiku
Conversions:
Freelance writer Daniel Baum blabbed in 140-character form about his rise and fall at The New Yorker – just in time for his new book launch.
Who’s making money?
So far, Twitter is another VC trust-fund baby. But its powerful real-time search capabilities make it extremely attractive to a conventional search engine such as Google, whose results will always be a few steps behind.

Personal Social Networks

Strengths:
It doesn’t get much more personal than this. An advertiser’s dream.
Weaknesses:
Some might think twice before playing in another company’s walled garden.
Services:
Facebook, Myspace Linked In
Conversions:
Facebook has converted nearly every high school and college-aged kid into a computer geek and online consumer.
Who’s making money?
Program developers, online marketers and Mark Zuckerberg have all made a pretty penny from Facebook. But questions about proprietary rights and privacy continue to loom over the site.