Talking Dirty on Your iPod
“Podcasting, that baby medium, is suddenly home to a lot of adult content. Introduced to a mainstream audience just last month, the technology — radiolike programming for your iPod — that was once the chaste province of ‘Geek News Central’ and ‘Knitcast’ is now reddening faces that sport those trademark white earbuds… At podcast.net, the No. 2 most-searched-for term (right between BBC and NPR) is porn. At Leyden’s site, six of the top 20 shows are adult-oriented. And at Apple’s behemoth iTunes store, ‘Open Source Sex’ is No. 11 and climbing. From the breathy erotica of ‘Pod Porn’ to the subdued interviews of ‘SexGeeks,’ mature programming for the iPod can be titillating, educational or sometimes both, and it is spreading fast. Part of the appeal is populism. Just as indie-rock podcasts see themselves as the antidote to rigid corporate playlists, sex-themed shows are proudly amateur. Anyone with a microphone, a PC and some privacy can produce one. ‘You don’t need big breasts or big advertisers,’ says Violet Blue, the host of ‘Open Source Sex.’ ‘It’s the ultimate democratic tool for sex education.’” —MSNBC (US)
It should come as zero surprise that sex is quickly occupying a significant amount of terrain in the fledgling world of podcasting, since sex seems to do that with every new area opened up by technology. Fleshbot in particular has featured a few stories about sexy podcasts. No, the real surprise — sort of casually tossed off in this story — is to learn that Apple actually lists adult podcasts in its online music store. It’s true. Launch iTunes and search the word “sex” in the podcast directory. You’ll be surprised at the results.
Surprised? What’s surprising is to see a major corporation such as Apple take a liberal approach toward disseminating adult material. It’s difficult to imagine Microsoft doing the same, and indeed there has been some controvery about the specter of Apple “peddling porn.” But why should it be any more objectionable for Apple to sell adult podcasts than for it to sell technology podcasts or rap music with lyrics about killing cops? Like a web portal, Apple’s business is not to monitor content but to provide a platform for delivering it. Besides which, given the sex appeal of Apple’s product line, probably no podcast could be sexier than the iPod itself.
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