[…] being able to say, “wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.
What podcasting holds in the promise of its open format is the proof that an open web can still thrive and be relevant, that it can inspire new systems that are similarly open to take root and grow.
Could someone explain to me (I’m a developer so use whatever terms you like, maybe), how does the massive amount of podcasts reach the world? Say if I wanted to make a podcast app (I don’t, I love Pocket Casts), where would I sync the massive list’o’casts? Does it work like that? Or do you scrape the entire internet? What is happening?
It’s done via RSS feeds that the podcast creators then submit to aggregators. Then apps pull that information down from said aggregators. This website explains the gist of it.
https://rss.com/blog/how-to-create-an-rss-feed-for-a-podcast/
So how do the aggregators sync with each other to get all the podcasts? Or is it up to the podcast to “post” to all the aggregators?
The aggregators don’t sync with each other. The podcast creators upload the new show to each aggregator (or use an app that uploads to multiple).
Okay cool, that I think explains everything I’ve wondered about this topic lol. Awesome, thank you!
iTunes api, and if apple turns evil there are other list-o-cast apis like fyyd.de.
Lolol yeah like that could EVER happen! /s
Compared to Reddit or Twitter anyway, they haven’t killed their API yet so apps like pocket casts are mainly using iTunes for search
Are you sure about this? I was under the impression there were several aggregators out there who all sort of shared data, iTunes just being one of them. Maybe you are totally right, but if you are that sort of undermines the original post, which is saying that the podcast ecosystem doesn’t depend on any one company/org.