[…] 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.
If those Joe Rogan fans could read, they would be very upset right now!
EDIT: Oh you know what? I just fact-checked myself and apparently that podcast is no longer Spotify-exclusive as of very recently. I hope you enjoyed the joke anyway.
Everything is better when it ends with a fact check.
Even sex?
Especially sex
“Did that just happen?”
For these guys? Yes! Probably about HIV or something.
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I feel him selling out turned me off ever wanting to watch it. He didn’t need the money, he was already super well off. So he just showed that he didn’t value his listeners, he knew he would lose some but didn’t care.
Compared to my favorite podcast that offers people to email him if they can’t afford the paid stuff because he just wants people to be able to listen.
Agree. I mean I dunno if I’d be able to say no to $100 million even if I was already wealthy, so I don’t want to make it too black-and-white… But it definitely did harm, and I think it’s fair to describe it as selling out.
Who’s your favorite podcast? They sound rad.
Tangentially Speaking by Chris Ryan.
He interviews interesting people, some famous, most not. The latest episode was with a guy he happened to meet at a party and thought he had an interesting story.
As the name implies he is very happy to go off on tangents, so the episodes can end up in topics you never would have guessed from the guest description.
Word of warning he does tend to talk for about 30 minutes at the start of every episode. I personally enjoy it but I know others who it annoys.
I will check him out, thanks!
It’s no more radical than saying… “wherever you get your gasoline.” It’s just a thing to say because theres more than one source, and there being more than one source is not radical.
It’s just a thing to say because theres more than one source, and there being more than one source is not radical.
The closest thing to podcasts is probably TV. You can’t say “available wherever you stream television” because everything is exclusive to a different service. You can’t even say “available wherever audiobooks are sold” for similar reasons. EPIC is trying to make the same thing true for video games as much as they can as well.
It is worth pointing out that entertainment does not have to be (and should not be) exclusive to a singular middleman.
Nothing radical about that. For 90% of people “Wherever you get your podcasts” means Apple, Spotify or YouTube. It has nothing to do with the win of freedom, it has to do with saving time to the speaker and listener. Same as with gas, as the other guy said.
Apple, Spotify or YouTube
Or. Instead of “only on Netflix” and “only on Amazon Prime” and “only in Disney+”.
AntennaPod (OpenSource) and I subscribe to RSS feeds. How else would you do it? Spotify? That crap can’t even reliably store where I paused last time.
It’s only radical if it is not preceeded by “Apple podcasts, Spotify,…”
When people push listening on Spotify even though the podcast is available everywhere else I roll my eyes.
One of my main motivations for cancelling my Spotify subscription was their insistence on capitalising on podcasts. They have a perfectly fine business model with music, why do they need to ruin podcasts?
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I don’t understand their podcasts. It isn’t sectioned off or organised in any kind of way.
I tried it out and still regret it, because even after unsubscribing from all of the podcasts I still get notified of new episodes all the time.
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As a Spotify user for most of its history, I think there are some UI and UX issues to resolve, but I literally have never had the experience you describe here.
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I feel ya. I’m not sure why you’re having that much trouble and I’m not. I tried a couple podcasts, hated it, and stopped seeing recommendations pretty quickly. I get what you mean about so many recommendations though, it’s kind of annoying sometimes.
I have no idea where I get my podcasts; I hit Add Podcast in AntennaPod, it goes somewhere and I get a podcast subscription somehow. Can’t explain that.
upvote this wherever you get your federated content.
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.
if apple turns evil
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.
…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…
Who is suggesting that such technology is impossible? The internet is literally exactly this, based on an open standard (Internet Protocol) which is not controlled by any proprietary group.
IP wasn’t the first computer networking standard to be developed, but its open nature made it accessible to any interested manufacturers and that made it the most successful standard.
Anyone suggesting that this “kind of technology” is “supposed to be impossible” is either ignorant or stupid, or both.
Who is suggesting that such technology is impossible?
Every business that could stand to make a buck from it being that way. But the author obviously meant in the current economic model we live under.
the current economic model we live under.
The internet isn’t exactly ancient technology. Do you think the ‘current economic model’ is significantly different from the 1970s? (and can you back up that conclusion?)
I don’t follow what you’re saying. The economic model we’re in has been around for hundreds, arguably thousands of years in most ways. What about it?
The author was assuming people would know that “impossible” doesn’t always need to be literal. Things are more often impossible because of established norms. That’s all.
The norms we are discussing here is that under capitalism, the norm tends to be trending away from free and open systems. Because where there is a buck to be made, there’s usually someone doing everything they can to make that buck and prevent the openness that would render them useless.
The economic model we’re in has been around for hundreds, arguably thousands of years in most ways. What about it?
And open source came into being inside of that model, and has grown and thrived since. So obviously, it’s not impossible.
The norms we are discussing here is that under capitalism, the norm tends to be trending away from free and open systems.
Right, this isn’t true. While certainly there are some businesses that try to restrict it, open systems grow and spread anyway. Open source is bigger and stronger than ever today. Open source software is so widespread that it’s a security concern for governments (look at the log4j fiasco). You interact with open platforms every day, even if you don’t see their names in commercials or on billboards (many of them don’t have to advertise).
I think you’re just being argumentative honestly. I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said really, I just take issue with the intentional reading of “possible” as “technically possible”.
Yeah OSS and a lot of open systems are huge and great. They will continue to grow. But as we both know, business will continue to be intentionally shitty. Exhibit A: world’s first trillion dollar company, Apple, thrives mostly due to the proprietary ecosystem they’ve put in place. It’s a “winning” strategy, as much as I loathe it.
We’re not disagreeing on anything but wording here.
OK, but I’m not arguing for the sake of argument. What I take issue with is the overly negative point of view that isn’t justified by the reality of the current technology market. It’s limited, depressive and ultimately self-destructive.
Perspective matters. Money isn’t the only measure of success. Internet infrastructure is basically Linux, nginx and Apache - seriously, apart from user endpoints it’s pretty much all open source - and the most common endpoint OS is Android so also open source. The idea that open systems aren’t as successful as proprietary ones doesn’t reflect reality, it’s a projection of a limited point of view onto reality (it only seems true if large portions of the current technology market are ignored).
I get where you are coming from now. Thanks for elaborating.
I can see where you’d get that it’s an overly negative point of view, but I’ll be damned if companies like Apple don’t give me so many reasons to think that way :(
