Knight Ridder Newspapers
Limbaugh crows about podcasting

The nation’s No. 1 radio host says Steve Jobs doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

In a posting on his Web log, Rush Limbaugh disputed the Apple founder’s statement that podcasting is the hottest thing in radio. Limbaugh countered: “I am the hottest thing in podcasting.”

Limbaugh has begun offering podcasts of programs to subscribers of his online fan club. “This program is the hottest thing in podcasting,” he claimed.

He added that he’s thinking about bolstering the content distributed by file downloads to include a morning update and interviews he does for his newsletter. “Raw, unedited, just to see what these things sound like,” Limbaugh said.

—————–

Research group

Apple Computer’s iTunes Music Store was used by almost 30 percent of households that downloaded music in March, according to researchers at NPD Group.

While the free peer-to-peer file sharing network WinMX was the most popular distribution source, by 2.1 million households, iTunes and LimeWire tied with 1.7 million households each. Paid a la carte music offerings like Napster and RealNetworks also placed in the top 10.

One of the music industry’s questions has been whether paid download stores could compete with free file-sharing networks. “That question has now been answered,” said Russ Crupnick, president of NPD’s Music and Movies division.

“iTunes is more popular than nearly any P2P service. Digital download stores appear to have created a compelling and economically viable alternative to illegal file sharing,” he added.