Apple announced that in just two days iTunes customers have subscribed to more than one million Podcasts from the new iTunes Podcast Directory. iTunes 4.9 users can now have each new episode of their favorite Podcasts automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod.

"With the release of iTunes 4.9, listeners are voting with their ears," said Adam Curry, co-founder of the PodShow Podcast Network. "Subscriptions have dramatically increased across our entire PodShow Podcast Network, and I predict over the coming months that iTunes will introduce tens of millions of new listeners to the world of Podcasting."

That is certainly music to the ears of podcasters like Winston Ford who offers podcasts from his music blog TheCouchSessions.com. Ford and other music bloggers and podcasters are reshaping how music is marketed by offering a bottom-up approach where music fans are the "tastemakers" who are helping new artists reach bigger audiences.

"iTunes has done what possibly no one else could have accomplished, propelled Podcasting into the mainstream," said Will Lewis, management consultant for KCRW. "Our servers have been swamped with a stratospheric increase in traffic. In fact, downloads have increased tenfold as a result of the iTunes 4.9 launch."