19 ms·

Will Spotify Ruin Podcasting?

491 points by chottocharaii 7y ago

philips 7y ago
Has anyone seen a way to disable podcasts in Spotify?
- willbw 7y ago
  What would disabling them look like?
  - philips 7y ago
    I don't want all of the podcast recommendations on the homepage and search results.
- wyxuan 7y ago
  No. They want people to listen to more podcasts and less music
  - pier25 7y ago
    Why is that?
    - jacobobryant 7y ago
      You don't have to deal with record labels for one thing. I had a conversation once with someone who was doing a music startup for a while. He said his startup pivoted to podcasts (specifically for executives/business people) because it was easier to make money.
      - wyxuan 7y ago
        yep. in the time it takes for you to go through 10 songs, where spotify does a mini payout each time listen, you can listen to a podcast, where spotify not only makes $$ through ad placement thanks to anchor, they get the content for free
    - NikolaeVarius 7y ago
      Because podcasts generally dont have a centralized analytics model due to the RSS feed nature of it,spotify wants to get podcasters to pay for analytics as a revenue source, also ability for spotify to inject ads.dynamically is a huge source of revenue.
    - yepthatsreality 7y ago
      Probably because podcasts have ad breaks.
      - pier25 7y ago
        Excuse my ignorance as I've never listened to a podcast in Spotify... but does Spotify insert ads into podcasts?
        thundergolfer 7y ago
        Right now you can listen to podcasts that are years old and yet the ads that play are current. This means they've been recut with new ads, probably automatically. I notice this most on the Ezra Klein podcast. I don't think it's Spotify that's helping this podcast achieve this functionality, but in future Spotify will certainly be providing this ability to podcast producers, if it isn't already. I'd expect that in the near future the podcasts you listen to will be dynamically stitched together so that I hear ads tailored to me, which are different from the ads you hear. Different users will also get different ads loading.
        pier25 7y ago
        Anchor does this "dynamic stitching". Much like Youtube they host your podcast for "free" and pay you a fee according to how many listens you get. https://anchor.fm/ https://anchor.fm/ Edit: no, I was wrong. Apparently they match you with sponsors but the ads are recorded by the podcaster.
        joegahona 7y ago
        The podcast creators themselves insert them in by speaking them. Which, now that I think about it, is bullshit, since I pay $10/month or whatever for "ad-free Spotify."
        NikolaeVarius 7y ago
        Ad free music
    - vxNsr 7y ago
      Startup podcast addresses this question in one of their last episodes. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/94heaz/thanksgiving-in-stockholm https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/94heaz/thanksgiving-in...
rahuldottech 7y ago
Article is definitely worth a read. > From 2014 to 2020, Spotify bought 15 companies, companies that build everything from data analytics to music and audio production tools to audio ad tools to licensing platforms, and podcasting networks. > Spotify is directly mimicking Google and Facebook, and attempting to roll up power over digital audio markets the way Google and Facebook did over the internet. It has already done so in music. As it exists today, the podcasting ecosystem is a very open system, with publicly accessible feeds and the ability to use any app/player. I'm very afraid that if Spotify keeps this up, it's going to lead to a very fragmented system similar to the film/TV streaming industry (Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, et al.) which would require you to install proprietary apps and pay for multiple subscriptions to listen to stuff. Likely several different apps for different shows and companies. Unfortunately, it appears that Spotify is motivated by increased profits and getting a market monopoly to completely destroy the open system that we have today, which will also make it undoubtedly harder for newcomers to enter the industry. Right now Spotify complains about how Apple apps have an unfair advantage on Apple's platform, but they're doing the same thing. Spotify podcasts have an unfair advantage on Spotify's platform. I don't believe the platform should also be a content creator. This is really shitty of Spotify to do.
- chris123 7y ago
  Spotify kinda sucks. And has since they got their first taste of success. I was living in Sweden when they launched and signed up. It was great then. And for a couple of years. Then some new investors came in and it went this direction, just extract value by all means possible, winner take all, destroy, destroy, destroy. Except for themselves. Thanks Silicon Valley vampires, you ruin pretty much everything you touch
  - wyxuan 7y ago
    No, the original people in spotify are the people behind this push into podcasts (see last season of the gimlet podcast Startup). It started from when they saw how german use of spotify exploded as publishers put audiobooks on spotify.
  - dikei 7y ago
hombre_fatal 7y ago
If Spotify can figure out how to make podcasters real money and save them from begging for donos/Patreon/subs on every episode, it's going to make big waves in the space. Spotify annoys us, being used to free and open things on the hobbyist's dime, but as we smugly advise on HN when it's convenient for us: sometimes you need to shake up the business model. That's what Spotify might be able to pull off for podcasters. Not sure it will ruin anything, though. The people who prefer to beg for donations in their podcast episodes are always free to do it. Our unwillingness to support content creators is what ruins things and puts everything behind an explicit paywall.
- tartoran 7y ago
  Spotify managed to make musicians abismimal returns, why would it work any differently for podcasts?
  - cm2012 7y ago
    Spotify pays more per listen than radio or YouTube.
    - untog 7y ago
      But significantly less than CD sales used to.
    - rodgerd 7y ago
      And a third Tidal and a fraction of album sales. They are the worst-paying of the major music streaming services.
      - raverbashing 7y ago
        Tidal, the one that was having financial troubles right? And who buys albums nowadays? I made some digital download purchases, but now they don't make much sense. Smaller artists get paid less on Spotify but bigger artists get paid more (not sure about the details)
Simulacra 7y ago
I think Spodify's entrance into the podcasting market is a good thing. Good podcasts stay, bad ones don't. Spotify could bring longevity to great podcasts, help grow small ones, but anyone else can start a podcast and run with it if they'd prefer. It's like asking: Did cable ruin television? No, it made it more diverse and expansive.
- nuclearnice1 7y ago
  I don’t follow the analogy to cable. It seems that podcasting is already diverse. Why will consolidation under Spotify increase diversity?
samdunham 7y ago
For the most part, the podcasts I listen to are independent. I'm not all that concerned about a megacorp coming in and destroying things. If Apple and Google couldn't do it, I think we're okay for a while.
- wyxuan 7y ago
  spotify has also decided to say editorially independent from podcast making, just look at Gimlet
- oefrha 7y ago
  > If Apple and Google couldn't do it Apple sat on a de facto monopoly on the podcast player market for a vey long time and simply left it alone. They absolutely could have ruined it. They just didn’t. I’m not sure about the Android ecosystem (it was pretty much irrelevant for the podcast market until relatively recently anyway), but did Google even try?
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    Google barely even touches podcasts. I'm not sure if there's a "default podcast app" on Android.
    - arkitaip 7y ago
      There is an app called Google Podcasts (com.google.android.apps.podcasts) but I don't think it's an Android default.
hellotomyrars 7y ago
I have a difficult time believing that, of all things, Podcasting is the thing Spotify will/has ruined. The Podcast ecosystem is very open, but the only monetization vehicle I know of that has made a meaningful impact in the history of Podcasts is Midroll (Which now looking up seems to be owned by Stitcher). I know from listening to the Giant Bomb podcast for a decade that they had a hard time justifying the podcast to the business-side of their operation for years because it doesn't work in to a balance sheet. Presumably that is less of an issue now and I hear Midroll-based ads on literally every podcast I listen to. I'd be much more worried about that than Spotify as far as monopoloization goes. This article leaves them out entirely, and it feels like it's almost done with purpose to make the point they want.
- asiachick 7y ago
  I don't know what "MidRoll" is but my podcasting software (and I'm assuming all others) has +30sec -15sec buttons. I use them top skip every ad. Maybe I'm an exception and most people listen to ads but I find it's trivial to skip them so I do.
  - Tyr42 7y ago
    I'll skip, unless I'm driving and can't touch my phone to do so.
    - Intermernet 7y ago
      Not sure if this helps you, but I recently discovered that Android Auto accepts voice controls for fast forward and rewind, despite not having UI controls for the same. "fast forward 30 seconds" does what you expect it to do.
  - kekub 7y ago
    I never skip the ads as I appreciate the companies make my favourite podcasts possible. Even though most hosts of the podcasts I listen to are very picky about their ads.
  - jeena 7y ago
fouc 7y ago
This seems like a parallel to blogs and rss feeds.
tdhz77 7y ago
They are certainly trying to pivot.
chooseaname 7y ago
What will ruin podcasting is when 4 or 5 conglomerates own nearly all podcasts.
- ekianjo 7y ago
  How can a few companies own something that can be produced at near zero cost and distributed at low cost as well?
  - chooseaname 7y ago
    Because at some point independents won't be able to compete for ad dollars, etc. and will sign up with one of the few companies.
    - TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
      I was around for the birth of the internet. There was a time when motivated people produced things they were passionate about, and put them on the internet without ANY consideration of "monetization," and it was glorious. Now that everything gets gobbled up by FAANG, it's much more difficult to find people who are still doing awesome things outside of those walled gardens. And, given that hosting is SO commoditized, cheap, and easy these days, it's doubly disappointing. I've never gotten into podcasts, but I REALLY hope this attempt by Spotify to wall-up the art fails miserably.
    - yoz-y 7y ago
      I think the majority of podcasts (in numbers, not in the listener count) don't have any ads at all and are just produced by fans of some topic. Those podcasts will live forever (well, as long as hosting is paid for) as will personal blogs. Podcasts that live off patreon and similar schemes will be fine as well.
  - jshevek 7y ago
    By conditioning consumers to consume that product in a way that depends on the companies.
  - 7y ago
infynyxx2 7y ago
Overcast is so much better than Spotify for podcasts. I still use Spotify for all my music but gave up listening podcasts; it’s not just intuitive as overcast.
dontbenebby 7y ago
I'm unclear what happens if I listen to podcasts in Spotify as a paying subscriber - am I still tracked? It troubles me that if a favorite podcast goes "Spotify Exclusive" I may not be able to listen to it without being subjected to invasive targeted behavioral tracking. I'm not opposed to ads in podcasts (if they're disclosed) but to be tracked etc, especially as a paying customer, really squicks me out.
- dnbcameron 7y ago
  Yes. Spotify will insert targeted ads into your podcast.
  - dontbenebby 7y ago
    The insertion isn't my concern, it's that they do tracking to decide what to insert :/
dwighttk 7y ago
No RSS, not a podcast, so no... They might make it so that some podcasts some people like shut down and move to Spotify...
- number6 7y ago
  RSS is the podcasting platform. Also You cant monetize the network. It was tried before and it had not worked out. Key is value for value. And with the ad scheme and analytics I bet the value for the listener goes down as they become the product
CharlesW 7y ago
Spotify isn't a podcasting platform. It's a proprietary audio platform that uses podcast feeds as input. The Spotify app isn't a podcast app — you can't play podcasts with it. You can only play shows which have been imported via podcast feeds into their proprietary platform. If Spotify can continue to get folks talking about Spotify as a "podcasting" platform, listening to "podcasts" on Spotify, etc. (and they've been very successful in doing that judging from the posts in this thread), the world will begin to forget that "podcasting" ever meant "open medium".
- xmprt 7y ago
  100% agree with this. I have a Spotify subscription but I continue to listen to podcasts on another app. Even as a music app, Spotify lacks so many basic features (like swipe gestures to add a song to the queue) that I can't imagine it being any good for podcasts.
- mongol 7y ago
  > The Spotify app isn't a podcast app — you can't play podcasts Exactly. A podcast is an audio stream that is published via RSS. If you can't subscribe to _any_ arbitrary podcast RSS with the app, then it is not a podcast app. If podcast was a trademark, this kind if abuse of the word would not happen. But now it will be embraced, extended and eventually extinguished as we know it.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    The people who produce podcasts think that podcasts are the shows they make. Why should your technical/implementational definition take precedence over that? It's not obvious that a photo is a JPEG file and it's not obvious that a podcast is an RSS file with audio embeds.
    - mongol 7y ago
      It is like a photographer calls a png file a jpg file, because to him jpg file is just an image file. The word podcast has a historical meaning, just like most other words. It is not my definition.
pochamago 7y ago
My experience has only been that Spotify is another good place to submit a podcast to. I use a Transistor as my host, and it makes sense to publish everywhere, since once you set it up anyone can listen to you regardless of what their main listening hub is. Different podcasts have different demographics, some of mine have thrived on Spotify, some get almost nothing from it. I don't see them being capable of becoming a monopoly
monadic2 7y ago
It’s hard to see how this might happen without also rolling up Patreon.
adventist 7y ago
I think it has to do with the RSS standard. As a podcaster ("Eyes of Reason") I like Spotify because I can see things like the age, gender and location of where my listeners are coming from as well as see things like how long they listened. If we can update the RSS Protocol to have these features then it would prevent this sort of Payola and agglomeration from happening.
- etrabroline 7y ago
  You could look at the IP addresses of people accessing your RSS feed to see what city they're in. Would creepy tracking software really tell you anything about your audience that you don't already know?
- Marsymars 7y ago
  As a podcast listener, I'm not willing to use a standard that tracks me any more than RSS enables.
- Angostura 7y ago
  Maybe regularly ask your listeners to fill in a voluntary survey, if helps support you. I'm sure many would. FWIW, Spotify thinks it knows my age and gender, but it really doesn't.
- 74ls00 7y ago
  You have to weigh up the value of such data against the privacy wishes of all podcast listeners. It is not clear to me at all how knowing the gender of your audience could improve the product you’re producing.
- chrismorgan 7y ago
  RSS fundamentally can’t have those features. Feeds are fetched over HTTP, and the server only has access to what details the client wishes to provide—and web browsers and their users have rebelled against revealing information far less detailed than that which you’re desiring. Location via IP address is the most along those lines that you’re going to get. Any attempt to demand more information (e.g. respond 403 Forbidden if certain HTTP headers are lacking) would fundamentally fail, and/or fragment the ecosystem: existing clients would be broken on such sites, due to not sending the demanded headers; new independent client software will implement these demanded headers with spurious values, because they’re representing users more than the creators or advertisers, and almost no users want to provide such invasive details. It’s only client software from companies like Spotify that will genuinely attempt to provide the correct details.
kebman 7y ago
tl;dr Only if they gain a monopoly. Either way, I'll be looking for free solutions. The main reason I don't use Spotify, and why Spotify can never reach me, is Bandcamp and the fact that I really like my RSS feed.
iamEAP 7y ago
I was always somewhat confused about why Spotify got into the podcast space, until I tried Spotify’s ad platform: unless you’re advertising music or specific types of consumer goods, targeting based on podcast category is an order of magnitude more powerful than just artist/genre.
- perpetualpatzer 7y ago
  The other piece is that the negotiating supply of podcasts is less concentrated than that of music. With music, if you want to reduce licensing fees, you have to negotiate with a label, who could meaningfully undermine your product by pulling all their artists. Podcasts are closer to YouTube... few podcasters have have scale to demand terms, having one walk away over terms is less of a problem because you don't playlist podcasts in the way you do music, lots of podcasters in it for love of the game or starting out hoping to hit it big (and willing to forgo ad revenue for audience).
atoav 7y ago
One of my favourite podcasts is moving to become spotify exclusive. It is hard to put the betrayal I felt into words, when they first announced it. I know it is a little silly and they probably do what is (in the short term) the best financial decision for them, but I already accepted that this is it and I won't listen to them anymore. If you go exclusive to any plattform you never do it for your fans, but essentially against them. They might have a podcatcher they listen to you on they used for years, which they now should change because you want to limit the plattforms you are on. The german podcast scene gladly seems to be quite resistant against these kind of things and they say they earn more through direct donations than spotify and/or audible is able to give them anyways. Why would you voluntarily give up that freedom? And why is it so often US podcasters who do it first (they are also much more plastered with ads)?
- hackmiester 7y ago
  I don’t know, but there aren’t many podcasts I’d switch platforms for. I’d much sooner find other podcasts.
  - atoav 7y ago
    And the thing is: you don't even need a plattform. A podcast could be as easy as a feed pointing to the latest compressed audio file of yours. The most expensive thing in podcasting is the gear and your time.
    - Angostura 7y ago
      Indeed - its not really a podcast anymore.
    - jeena 7y ago
      That's kind of like I do it [1], I only have a RSS file and the mp3 uploaded to the server. I send that RSS link to that one iTunes service so it indexes the RSS file so that all the podcast apps which use their API for their search can find my podcast and subscribe to the RSS file on my server and download the mp3's from my server. For the gear, I went fairly cheap, I got a Zoom H5 [2], which is super small, light and portable and two lavalier mics, one for me and one for the person I interview. I then upload the two WAV files to Auphonic [3] and they add the jingles to it, clean up the sound, normalize it and let me download the mono mp3 which is really small but good quality, which I then upload to my server. The whole workflow is surprisingly easy and fast. The most time I spend on finding people to talk to and trying to arrange a meeting at a specific time and place. [1] https://jeena.net/pods.rss https://jeena.net/pods.rss [2] https://zoom-na.com/products/field-video-recording/field-recording/h5-handy-recorder https://zoom-na.com/products/field-video-recording/field-rec... [3] https://auphonic.com/ https://auphonic.com/
hazz99 7y ago
I don't mind this. As a consumer, I really love having podcasts available on spotify. I hated using another app, and its nice to be able to queue music/podcast/music for some variety in the gym. I was never a big podcast user beforehand, but I listen to a lot now. The main reason I didn't listen to any beforehand was the friction in needing to download another app (Which one!? There's so many!) and swap between it. It was very difficult to build a habit when I could just listen to music.
anonsivalley652 7y ago
Welcome to clickbait headlines world: where telling truth is a revolutionary act that might get you killed (in the most extreme cases that embarrass the warmongers). Anyhow, take two of the podcasters I happen to listen to: - Michael Moore's Rumble - MM's complete focus until things get better - Steve Lehto's Lehto's Law - Lemon law, legal and other stories both stream to Youtube also, which are subject to two or more completely different corporate masters. It seems like a silly suggestion if there's no technical, legal or economic barriers to publishing to N platforms to suggest podcasters are locked-in. If someone were deplatformed from YT and Spotify, there's Twitch, Floatplane and Vimeo and hundreds of others. A sensible creator should have a website at a minimum to sell merch and link to social media, and have backup content sites and backup means of monetization (in-content, sponsored, and/or patreon/paypal direct). I think the big platforms are making it more and more difficult for small creators to make money, but I also think creators, large and small, need to diversify and protect themselves from being dependent on or being locked-into exclusive deals with any one corporate platform. OTOH, paraphrasing Chris Hedges, public commons and public discourse have been replaced with corporate platforms, public-private "partnerships" and mixed-use shopping areas. Slowly-but-surely, a number of corporations are gobbling us up and making us subject to their arbitrary whims (Youtube's opaque processes to handle copyright and fair-use). He refers to it by the name "inverted totalitarianism".. corporations subvert democracy with unlimited "speech" PAC money, manufacture consent through PR messaging, Cambridge Analytica's and troll factories to shift sentiment in desired ways, and possess immense control over individuals to express themselves and make a living that's not obvious until it's used, the effects of which are rarely obvious to other people.
- reagent_finder 7y ago
  Calling a well-researched and crafted, long thoughtpiece clickbait rattles my nettles. I feel a lot of people mentioning individual podcasts in this thread is missing the point -- if the masses see Spotify as the place to find podcasts in, that's where they'll find podcasts in. If ad money moves there, content creators will move there, and draw a lot of people with them. Of course podcasters aren't going to be locked-in, neither will advertisers or listeners, but there will be a significant lure to just going on Spotify. What's your first reaction when you want to find a video? You go on YouTube. What's your first reaction when you want to find a solution to a silly problem you're sure a solution exists? You go to Google. What's your first reaction when you want to watch someone stream a computer game? You go to Twitch. THAT is what Spotify wants here. They want to be the first or at least be in contention to being the first whenever anyone wants to find something audio-related. Music, new albums, and apparently now podcasts. They're already a household name so when a normal person hears that there are good podcasts on Spotify they'll just go "oh huh, that makes sense" and if they get interested they might check one out. I'd like to say I'll keep an eye out for this but honestly who has the energy? A year from now someone will make a nice graphic showing how many podcasters have transitioned to Spotify and how it's affected the field. I find the clarion call to lawmakers both optimistic and naïve, blocking a merger because Spotify MIGHT cause platform stagnation in 15 years is just never going to happen.
zsolt-beringer 7y ago
My main concern about publishing monopolies is that they are obsolete in terms of quality control. Censorship has its right to prevent abuse and so on. But I think for well established free thinkers who are far from any extremities (CGP Grey comes to me as a great example) should thrive towards federated networks. But I understand that advertising and mass media is getting more and more complicated. #ChomskyWasRight ;)
LaundroMat 7y ago
I suppose it would be illegal to offer an RSS feed of podcasts recorded off of Spotify?
bloogsy 7y ago
I think it could possibly ruin the 'big budget', glossy podcasts in the mould of Serial as they take more money to produce and I'd imagine they are more reliant on ad income. It may also be more accurate to suggest that Spotify will ruin American podcasting - I can't see UK podcasts (particularly those that are BBC-funded) going spotify only, and iPhones (and probably by extension the podcasts app) are only a huge market share in the US. Here's hoping that the independently funded and smaller podcasts will continue to exist outisde of Spotify.
- Traster 7y ago
  Yeah the BBC podcasts aren't going to go exclusive, but instead they've launched their own podcast app and piss everyone off by going on about it constantly.
  - boygobbo 7y ago
    They might go exclusive to BBC Sounds. The BBC has already started pulling its services from those they perceive to be competitors, like TuneIn[1] and Google Podcast[2]. [1] https://radiotoday.co.uk/2019/08/bbc-to-pull-all-radio-services-from-tunein-uk-platform/ https://radiotoday.co.uk/2019/08/bbc-to-pull-all-radio-servi... [2] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/27/bbc-removes-podcasts-google-podcasts-and-assistant https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/27/bbc-removes-podcasts...
ejz 7y ago
The short answer: no. You will see some content go exclusive, but this is an inevitable feature of content-based markets. It's very difficult to differentiate yourself, and if you don't have your own content the content holders have the leverage to completely own you. It's what happened to Netflix. No one is complaining about them having their own shows. Spotify might even help. The US podcast market is stunted by the lack of good apps. Maybe with the power and money of a Spotify we can make a podcast app that lets providers make way more money, get way better analytics, and see actual feature-level innovation.
kristofferR 7y ago
Someone should create a service that generates RSS streams of Spotify exclusive podcasts. It would definitively be illegal, but that could be solved with proper opsec. It would definitively not be immoral.
- Angostura 7y ago
  > It would definitively be illegal Would it? Just a list of links to episodes in machine readable form? I can't see what issues it raise, unless it ignores a NOROBOTS
  - 74ls00 7y ago
    The RSS feed would need links to the audio files - I suspect that Spotify only allows access to those through its app much as YouTube does through its app/website (this is what stops YouTube video podcast feeds from becoming a thing)
    - frodprefect 7y ago
      https://youtube-dl.org/ https://youtube-dl.org/ Always a workaround.
      - 74ls00 7y ago
        Well my assumption was how it could be achieved without violating Terms of Service
  - corobo 7y ago
    I can't verify it right now but out of curiosity a while back I had a look and I'm sure Spotify were streaming their audio through websockets in some way - or at least linking to audio chunks in the websocket. You'd definitely have to download, remux, rehost the audio for it to work with podcast clients
    - Angostura 7y ago
blinotz 7y ago
Podcasting is perfect for big companies to wall off into their content gardens. AmaCasts YouGooCasts SpotCasts DisneyCasts AppleCasts Etc etc All it will take is a tiny tiny tiny bit of money by the standards of these companies to buy anything with an audience. Exactly the same at TV, you’ll need to find your podcast of choice on the channel that owns it.
spondyl 7y ago
I'll be the first to admit that I moved from Pocket Casts to Spotify at the start of the year, when I saw that my Year in Review featured podcasts. That's all it took, plus the convenience of having one singular app for music + podcasts. The only two podcasts I can't get on Spotify are Joe Rogan (I listen to like 1 out of every 500 episodes so will just download an MP3 or whatever) and a private RSS feed for Popular Front which I back on Patreon. It gives me the shits though that the Podcast section feels like an MVP still. There are no public API endpoints (not sure any podcast apps have them publically to be fair) and the desktop experience is subpar at best. Not even sure the play interval syncs up Perhaps I should take this opportunity to reassess my choice and move back to Pocket Casts. I was one of the original purchasers so I have a free lifetime subscription it seems. It looks like they have some desktop apps too (UWP + Mac) which seems new
AJRF 7y ago
As it stands Spotify apps are trash for listening to (or finding) anything other than popular music. Podcasts, Classical music, or anything that doesn't fit the mould of Artist -> Album -> Track just doesn't fit their domain models.
trekrich 7y ago
I listen to No Agenda! they won’t be going to Spotify!
nxpnsv 7y ago
Spotify has plenty of healthy competition. Audible also tries. Both players are poorly optimized for podcast consumption. They could learn lots from overcast...
billpg 7y ago
I use an RSS based podcast player for my drive to work and back. If a show doesn't have an RSS, I can't listen to it. I'm not going to jump to someone's website or switch between player apps while I'm driving along the M1. If you want to listen to your show, I'd need to switch player apps entirely and listen to all my shows on that other player.
bogomipz 7y ago
The author states: >"With most users going through either Google properties or Facebook properties, these corporations could then de-commodify the ad value of a publisher ad slot." Could someone say what is meant by "de-commodify the ad value of a publisher ad slot." and how it is "decomodified"?
yreg 7y ago
Marco, the creator of Overcast debates this situation from time to time on Accidental Tech Podcast. He recently said that Spotify doesn't seem to be as big an issue as they first expected it to be. It turns out, that most users who listen to podcasts on Spotify didn't listen to podcasts before. So although Spotify has a sizeable chunk of the market, it didn't hurt the other players much.
- rahuldottech 7y ago
  Yeah, except Spotify exclusives. They're forcing us to use a proprietary platform that's not accessible on all devices and operating systems (music players, non-smart phones, etc). That goes against the very open spirit of podcasting technology.
  - yreg 7y ago
    Yep, Stitcher.com does the same. It's a shame, I hope they won't suck too many great podcasts up.
- benhurmarcel 7y ago
  > It turns out, that most users who listen to podcasts on Spotify didn't listen to podcasts before. Probably like music, where a lot of the people who listen on Spotify didn't pay for music before.
hising 7y ago
From a personal point-of-view I am more into the not so professional podcasts and as soon as a popular podcast starts getting too serious and starts sounding like any radio show out there, I lose interest. The same with Youtube, I like the creativity and drive of people when they start a channel or podcast about some subject they really enjoy. I think a lot of podcasts dies for me when I notice that they are more focused on getting a bigger audience and cater for more than what they did in the first place. I realize why, it is about having the money to be able to do it for a living, but from a personal point-of-view, I totally lose interest when stuff gets too professional. So, in my mind, Spotify wont kill podcasting, they will help some podcasters to gain a living from it and maybe become mainstream, but there will always be room for an open podcast community when new podcasts start from a desire and interest in a specific area of interest and not from what a mega-company think will gain a lot of listeners.
rchaud 7y ago
> Recently, Spotify announced a new advertising service, Spotify Podcast Ads with what’s called ‘streaming ad insertion.’ Oh good, the Adsense-ification of podcast ads is now upon us. Why bother having the talent read out the ads and maybe inject some improvisation and humour into it, when we can just have the real-time-bidding system decide what commercial you should see, based on whatever Spotify has stitched together using all its data points.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- pythonaut_16 7y ago
  On the other hand, the potential value to the Podcast is a better long term revenue stream from old content. Most likely a worse experience as listener though. And you could make the argument it's worse for the ecosystem/community/relationship between Podcast and listener as well.
ryuukk_ 7y ago
Spotify saved podcasts it was becoming extinct, now gain of popularity because: - easy to discover - easy to manage feeds/playlists - easy to subscribe to favorite podcasts all in a single place another attempt at spreading FUDs against an European company FUCK AMERICA, FUCK USA, FUCK U
C1sc0cat 7y ago
When the 5th line mentions "democratic party cartel" I switch off author is the sort of person that gave us the disastrous magic grandpa ak Jeremy Corbin.
jccalhoun 7y ago
Spotify won't ruin podcasts any more than apple has. Right now if someone only posts a link to apple podcasts and not their rss then it makes it much less likely that I'll check out their show because I use android. The same thing will happen if someone posts a link to spotify. If you make it harder for me to get your product then I'll be less likely to bother.
- matrixagent 7y ago
  Good luck getting a non-tech person listening to a podcast by supplying them with an RSS link. I don't mean to be snarky, and I hate it from the bottom of my heart, but it's the sad reality. For 99,999% of people, a RSS link is not just making it "harder" to get to the product, it's making it impossible. They won't bother.
  - jeena 7y ago
    If it's a link (button) and you press it, AntennaPod will open it in it's UI and let you subscribe if you want to.
    - matrixagent 7y ago
      Which requires AntennaPod to be manually installed, which "normal people" won't do. (Either because they already have Spotify or Apple Podcasts or because they simply don't care enough.)
  - jccalhoun 7y ago
    Good luck getting an android person to listen to you podcast by supplying them with a link to apple. You don't have to just have one or the other. Have all the links. They are free.
    - matrixagent 7y ago
      Completely agreed, your comment made it sound like you were suggesting only RSS instead of any vendor-specific links to me, but I misunderstood. :)
buzzdenver 7y ago
This might be a noob question, but what is the right way to listen to podcasts on Spotify? They recently bought the company that produces half of the podcasts I listen to, Gimlet, so I wanted to see if it was a better experience using them. I devoted 5 minutes to it, but so far I wasn't able to figure out the basics, like subscribing to podcasts and seeing what's in the queue to listen to.
chadlavi 7y ago
If you don't want this to happen, support small podcast networks (which are essentially unions) like Maximum Fun.
jkhdigital 7y ago
There's no right answer here. Platforms (aka utilities in the real world) are wonderful sources of economic value but they are also natural monopolies. It appears that the promised land of monopoly profits are what drives capital to invest in building and improving platforms in the first place, so at what point do you impose the heavy hand of regulation to avoid abuse of monopoly power?
gsich 7y ago
Short answer: yes. But then again, a podcast needs a RSS feed. Not worth calling it a podcast otherwise.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
swiley 7y ago
Patreon already has an rss reader in its app doesn’t it? Why bother with Spotify.
JohnFen 7y ago
> Spotify is directly mimicking Google and Facebook, and attempting to roll up power over digital audio markets the way Google and Facebook did over the internet. There was always something about Spotify that made me very, very nervous. Although I could never put my finger on it, it did mean that I have never felt comfortable enough to use it. This statement provided me with a moment of realization, though -- this is what made me nervous about Spotify. It's also why I will never begin to use their service -- even if they manage to deprive me of the podcasts that I currently value.
jasonm89 7y ago
I've been paying for Spotify for 5 years, but I now only use it strictly for music. I find their UI for podcasts to be unintuitive and confusing, hoping they can update it soon.
apotatopot 7y ago
Sounds like they purchased Anchor for the ad insertion feature. IMO, as a podcast producer, this is a great thing. That said, Anchor currently lets us publish our podcast almost everywhere we'd like to. I can totally see Anchor being turned into Spotify: the podcast host, then that being done away with. I guess that's when we leave Anchor. I don't know, though. I hate having to run ads and how we never get support, but have reached something like 150 plays a week in a year. I hate to sound like a jerk, but if people paid producers instead of subscribing to companies, the world may be a better place.

491 points by chottocharaii 7y ago

philips 7y ago

Has anyone seen a way to disable podcasts in Spotify?

willbw 7y ago
What would disabling them look like?
- philips 7y ago
  I don't want all of the podcast recommendations on the homepage and search results.
wyxuan 7y ago
No. They want people to listen to more podcasts and less music
- pier25 7y ago
  Why is that?
  - jacobobryant 7y ago
    You don't have to deal with record labels for one thing. I had a conversation once with someone who was doing a music startup for a while. He said his startup pivoted to podcasts (specifically for executives/business people) because it was easier to make money.
    - wyxuan 7y ago
      yep. in the time it takes for you to go through 10 songs, where spotify does a mini payout each time listen, you can listen to a podcast, where spotify not only makes $$ through ad placement thanks to anchor, they get the content for free
  - NikolaeVarius 7y ago
    Because podcasts generally dont have a centralized analytics model due to the RSS feed nature of it,spotify wants to get podcasters to pay for analytics as a revenue source, also ability for spotify to inject ads.dynamically is a huge source of revenue.
  - yepthatsreality 7y ago
    Probably because podcasts have ad breaks.
    - pier25 7y ago
      Excuse my ignorance as I've never listened to a podcast in Spotify... but does Spotify insert ads into podcasts?
      - thundergolfer 7y ago
        Right now you can listen to podcasts that are years old and yet the ads that play are current. This means they've been recut with new ads, probably automatically. I notice this most on the Ezra Klein podcast. I don't think it's Spotify that's helping this podcast achieve this functionality, but in future Spotify will certainly be providing this ability to podcast producers, if it isn't already. I'd expect that in the near future the podcasts you listen to will be dynamically stitched together so that I hear ads tailored to me, which are different from the ads you hear. Different users will also get different ads loading.
        pier25 7y ago
        Anchor does this "dynamic stitching". Much like Youtube they host your podcast for "free" and pay you a fee according to how many listens you get. https://anchor.fm/ https://anchor.fm/ Edit: no, I was wrong. Apparently they match you with sponsors but the ads are recorded by the podcaster.
      - joegahona 7y ago
        The podcast creators themselves insert them in by speaking them. Which, now that I think about it, is bullshit, since I pay $10/month or whatever for "ad-free Spotify."
        NikolaeVarius 7y ago
        Ad free music
  - vxNsr 7y ago
    Startup podcast addresses this question in one of their last episodes. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/94heaz/thanksgiving-in-stockholm https://gimletmedia.com/shows/startup/94heaz/thanksgiving-in...

rahuldottech 7y ago

Article is definitely worth a read. > From 2014 to 2020, Spotify bought 15 companies, companies that build everything from data analytics to music and audio production tools to audio ad tools to licensing platforms, and podcasting networks. > Spotify is directly mimicking Google and Facebook, and attempting to roll up power over digital audio markets the way Google and Facebook did over the internet. It has already done so in music. As it exists today, the podcasting ecosystem is a very open system, with publicly accessible feeds and the ability to use any app/player. I'm very afraid that if Spotify keeps this up, it's going to lead to a very fragmented system similar to the film/TV streaming industry (Netflix, Prime, Apple TV, et al.) which would require you to install proprietary apps and pay for multiple subscriptions to listen to stuff. Likely several different apps for different shows and companies. Unfortunately, it appears that Spotify is motivated by increased profits and getting a market monopoly to completely destroy the open system that we have today, which will also make it undoubtedly harder for newcomers to enter the industry. Right now Spotify complains about how Apple apps have an unfair advantage on Apple's platform, but they're doing the same thing. Spotify podcasts have an unfair advantage on Spotify's platform. I don't believe the platform should also be a content creator. This is really shitty of Spotify to do.

chris123 7y ago
Spotify kinda sucks. And has since they got their first taste of success. I was living in Sweden when they launched and signed up. It was great then. And for a couple of years. Then some new investors came in and it went this direction, just extract value by all means possible, winner take all, destroy, destroy, destroy. Except for themselves. Thanks Silicon Valley vampires, you ruin pretty much everything you touch
- wyxuan 7y ago
  No, the original people in spotify are the people behind this push into podcasts (see last season of the gimlet podcast Startup). It started from when they saw how german use of spotify exploded as publishers put audiobooks on spotify.
- dikei 7y ago

hombre_fatal 7y ago

If Spotify can figure out how to make podcasters real money and save them from begging for donos/Patreon/subs on every episode, it's going to make big waves in the space. Spotify annoys us, being used to free and open things on the hobbyist's dime, but as we smugly advise on HN when it's convenient for us: sometimes you need to shake up the business model. That's what Spotify might be able to pull off for podcasters. Not sure it will ruin anything, though. The people who prefer to beg for donations in their podcast episodes are always free to do it. Our unwillingness to support content creators is what ruins things and puts everything behind an explicit paywall.

tartoran 7y ago
Spotify managed to make musicians abismimal returns, why would it work any differently for podcasts?
- cm2012 7y ago
  Spotify pays more per listen than radio or YouTube.
  - untog 7y ago
    But significantly less than CD sales used to.
  - rodgerd 7y ago
    And a third Tidal and a fraction of album sales. They are the worst-paying of the major music streaming services.
    - raverbashing 7y ago
      Tidal, the one that was having financial troubles right? And who buys albums nowadays? I made some digital download purchases, but now they don't make much sense. Smaller artists get paid less on Spotify but bigger artists get paid more (not sure about the details)

Simulacra 7y ago

I think Spodify's entrance into the podcasting market is a good thing. Good podcasts stay, bad ones don't. Spotify could bring longevity to great podcasts, help grow small ones, but anyone else can start a podcast and run with it if they'd prefer. It's like asking: Did cable ruin television? No, it made it more diverse and expansive.

nuclearnice1 7y ago
I don’t follow the analogy to cable. It seems that podcasting is already diverse. Why will consolidation under Spotify increase diversity?

samdunham 7y ago

For the most part, the podcasts I listen to are independent. I'm not all that concerned about a megacorp coming in and destroying things. If Apple and Google couldn't do it, I think we're okay for a while.

wyxuan 7y ago
spotify has also decided to say editorially independent from podcast making, just look at Gimlet
oefrha 7y ago
> If Apple and Google couldn't do it Apple sat on a de facto monopoly on the podcast player market for a vey long time and simply left it alone. They absolutely could have ruined it. They just didn’t. I’m not sure about the Android ecosystem (it was pretty much irrelevant for the podcast market until relatively recently anyway), but did Google even try?
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  Google barely even touches podcasts. I'm not sure if there's a "default podcast app" on Android.
  - arkitaip 7y ago
    There is an app called Google Podcasts (com.google.android.apps.podcasts) but I don't think it's an Android default.

hellotomyrars 7y ago

I have a difficult time believing that, of all things, Podcasting is the thing Spotify will/has ruined. The Podcast ecosystem is very open, but the only monetization vehicle I know of that has made a meaningful impact in the history of Podcasts is Midroll (Which now looking up seems to be owned by Stitcher). I know from listening to the Giant Bomb podcast for a decade that they had a hard time justifying the podcast to the business-side of their operation for years because it doesn't work in to a balance sheet. Presumably that is less of an issue now and I hear Midroll-based ads on literally every podcast I listen to. I'd be much more worried about that than Spotify as far as monopoloization goes. This article leaves them out entirely, and it feels like it's almost done with purpose to make the point they want.

asiachick 7y ago
I don't know what "MidRoll" is but my podcasting software (and I'm assuming all others) has +30sec -15sec buttons. I use them top skip every ad. Maybe I'm an exception and most people listen to ads but I find it's trivial to skip them so I do.
- Tyr42 7y ago
  I'll skip, unless I'm driving and can't touch my phone to do so.
  - Intermernet 7y ago
    Not sure if this helps you, but I recently discovered that Android Auto accepts voice controls for fast forward and rewind, despite not having UI controls for the same. "fast forward 30 seconds" does what you expect it to do.
- kekub 7y ago
  I never skip the ads as I appreciate the companies make my favourite podcasts possible. Even though most hosts of the podcasts I listen to are very picky about their ads.
- jeena 7y ago

fouc 7y ago

This seems like a parallel to blogs and rss feeds.

tdhz77 7y ago

They are certainly trying to pivot.

chooseaname 7y ago

What will ruin podcasting is when 4 or 5 conglomerates own nearly all podcasts.

ekianjo 7y ago
How can a few companies own something that can be produced at near zero cost and distributed at low cost as well?
- chooseaname 7y ago
  Because at some point independents won't be able to compete for ad dollars, etc. and will sign up with one of the few companies.
  - TheRealDunkirk 7y ago
    I was around for the birth of the internet. There was a time when motivated people produced things they were passionate about, and put them on the internet without ANY consideration of "monetization," and it was glorious. Now that everything gets gobbled up by FAANG, it's much more difficult to find people who are still doing awesome things outside of those walled gardens. And, given that hosting is SO commoditized, cheap, and easy these days, it's doubly disappointing. I've never gotten into podcasts, but I REALLY hope this attempt by Spotify to wall-up the art fails miserably.
  - yoz-y 7y ago
    I think the majority of podcasts (in numbers, not in the listener count) don't have any ads at all and are just produced by fans of some topic. Those podcasts will live forever (well, as long as hosting is paid for) as will personal blogs. Podcasts that live off patreon and similar schemes will be fine as well.
- jshevek 7y ago
  By conditioning consumers to consume that product in a way that depends on the companies.
- 7y ago

infynyxx2 7y ago

Overcast is so much better than Spotify for podcasts. I still use Spotify for all my music but gave up listening podcasts; it’s not just intuitive as overcast.

dontbenebby 7y ago

I'm unclear what happens if I listen to podcasts in Spotify as a paying subscriber - am I still tracked? It troubles me that if a favorite podcast goes "Spotify Exclusive" I may not be able to listen to it without being subjected to invasive targeted behavioral tracking. I'm not opposed to ads in podcasts (if they're disclosed) but to be tracked etc, especially as a paying customer, really squicks me out.

dnbcameron 7y ago
Yes. Spotify will insert targeted ads into your podcast.
- dontbenebby 7y ago
  The insertion isn't my concern, it's that they do tracking to decide what to insert :/

dwighttk 7y ago

No RSS, not a podcast, so no... They might make it so that some podcasts some people like shut down and move to Spotify...

number6 7y ago
RSS is the podcasting platform. Also You cant monetize the network. It was tried before and it had not worked out. Key is value for value. And with the ad scheme and analytics I bet the value for the listener goes down as they become the product

CharlesW 7y ago

Spotify isn't a podcasting platform. It's a proprietary audio platform that uses podcast feeds as input. The Spotify app isn't a podcast app — you can't play podcasts with it. You can only play shows which have been imported via podcast feeds into their proprietary platform. If Spotify can continue to get folks talking about Spotify as a "podcasting" platform, listening to "podcasts" on Spotify, etc. (and they've been very successful in doing that judging from the posts in this thread), the world will begin to forget that "podcasting" ever meant "open medium".

xmprt 7y ago
100% agree with this. I have a Spotify subscription but I continue to listen to podcasts on another app. Even as a music app, Spotify lacks so many basic features (like swipe gestures to add a song to the queue) that I can't imagine it being any good for podcasts.
mongol 7y ago
> The Spotify app isn't a podcast app — you can't play podcasts Exactly. A podcast is an audio stream that is published via RSS. If you can't subscribe to _any_ arbitrary podcast RSS with the app, then it is not a podcast app. If podcast was a trademark, this kind if abuse of the word would not happen. But now it will be embraced, extended and eventually extinguished as we know it.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  The people who produce podcasts think that podcasts are the shows they make. Why should your technical/implementational definition take precedence over that? It's not obvious that a photo is a JPEG file and it's not obvious that a podcast is an RSS file with audio embeds.
  - mongol 7y ago
    It is like a photographer calls a png file a jpg file, because to him jpg file is just an image file. The word podcast has a historical meaning, just like most other words. It is not my definition.

pochamago 7y ago

My experience has only been that Spotify is another good place to submit a podcast to. I use a Transistor as my host, and it makes sense to publish everywhere, since once you set it up anyone can listen to you regardless of what their main listening hub is. Different podcasts have different demographics, some of mine have thrived on Spotify, some get almost nothing from it. I don't see them being capable of becoming a monopoly

monadic2 7y ago

It’s hard to see how this might happen without also rolling up Patreon.

adventist 7y ago

I think it has to do with the RSS standard. As a podcaster ("Eyes of Reason") I like Spotify because I can see things like the age, gender and location of where my listeners are coming from as well as see things like how long they listened. If we can update the RSS Protocol to have these features then it would prevent this sort of Payola and agglomeration from happening.

etrabroline 7y ago
You could look at the IP addresses of people accessing your RSS feed to see what city they're in. Would creepy tracking software really tell you anything about your audience that you don't already know?
Marsymars 7y ago
As a podcast listener, I'm not willing to use a standard that tracks me any more than RSS enables.
Angostura 7y ago
Maybe regularly ask your listeners to fill in a voluntary survey, if helps support you. I'm sure many would. FWIW, Spotify thinks it knows my age and gender, but it really doesn't.
74ls00 7y ago
You have to weigh up the value of such data against the privacy wishes of all podcast listeners. It is not clear to me at all how knowing the gender of your audience could improve the product you’re producing.
chrismorgan 7y ago
RSS fundamentally can’t have those features. Feeds are fetched over HTTP, and the server only has access to what details the client wishes to provide—and web browsers and their users have rebelled against revealing information far less detailed than that which you’re desiring. Location via IP address is the most along those lines that you’re going to get. Any attempt to demand more information (e.g. respond 403 Forbidden if certain HTTP headers are lacking) would fundamentally fail, and/or fragment the ecosystem: existing clients would be broken on such sites, due to not sending the demanded headers; new independent client software will implement these demanded headers with spurious values, because they’re representing users more than the creators or advertisers, and almost no users want to provide such invasive details. It’s only client software from companies like Spotify that will genuinely attempt to provide the correct details.

kebman 7y ago

tl;dr Only if they gain a monopoly. Either way, I'll be looking for free solutions. The main reason I don't use Spotify, and why Spotify can never reach me, is Bandcamp and the fact that I really like my RSS feed.

iamEAP 7y ago

I was always somewhat confused about why Spotify got into the podcast space, until I tried Spotify’s ad platform: unless you’re advertising music or specific types of consumer goods, targeting based on podcast category is an order of magnitude more powerful than just artist/genre.

perpetualpatzer 7y ago
The other piece is that the negotiating supply of podcasts is less concentrated than that of music. With music, if you want to reduce licensing fees, you have to negotiate with a label, who could meaningfully undermine your product by pulling all their artists. Podcasts are closer to YouTube... few podcasters have have scale to demand terms, having one walk away over terms is less of a problem because you don't playlist podcasts in the way you do music, lots of podcasters in it for love of the game or starting out hoping to hit it big (and willing to forgo ad revenue for audience).

atoav 7y ago

One of my favourite podcasts is moving to become spotify exclusive. It is hard to put the betrayal I felt into words, when they first announced it. I know it is a little silly and they probably do what is (in the short term) the best financial decision for them, but I already accepted that this is it and I won't listen to them anymore. If you go exclusive to any plattform you never do it for your fans, but essentially against them. They might have a podcatcher they listen to you on they used for years, which they now should change because you want to limit the plattforms you are on. The german podcast scene gladly seems to be quite resistant against these kind of things and they say they earn more through direct donations than spotify and/or audible is able to give them anyways. Why would you voluntarily give up that freedom? And why is it so often US podcasters who do it first (they are also much more plastered with ads)?

hackmiester 7y ago
I don’t know, but there aren’t many podcasts I’d switch platforms for. I’d much sooner find other podcasts.
- atoav 7y ago
  And the thing is: you don't even need a plattform. A podcast could be as easy as a feed pointing to the latest compressed audio file of yours. The most expensive thing in podcasting is the gear and your time.
  - Angostura 7y ago
    Indeed - its not really a podcast anymore.
  - jeena 7y ago
    That's kind of like I do it [1], I only have a RSS file and the mp3 uploaded to the server. I send that RSS link to that one iTunes service so it indexes the RSS file so that all the podcast apps which use their API for their search can find my podcast and subscribe to the RSS file on my server and download the mp3's from my server. For the gear, I went fairly cheap, I got a Zoom H5 [2], which is super small, light and portable and two lavalier mics, one for me and one for the person I interview. I then upload the two WAV files to Auphonic [3] and they add the jingles to it, clean up the sound, normalize it and let me download the mono mp3 which is really small but good quality, which I then upload to my server. The whole workflow is surprisingly easy and fast. The most time I spend on finding people to talk to and trying to arrange a meeting at a specific time and place. [1] https://jeena.net/pods.rss https://jeena.net/pods.rss [2] https://zoom-na.com/products/field-video-recording/field-recording/h5-handy-recorder https://zoom-na.com/products/field-video-recording/field-rec... [3] https://auphonic.com/ https://auphonic.com/

hazz99 7y ago

I don't mind this. As a consumer, I really love having podcasts available on spotify. I hated using another app, and its nice to be able to queue music/podcast/music for some variety in the gym. I was never a big podcast user beforehand, but I listen to a lot now. The main reason I didn't listen to any beforehand was the friction in needing to download another app (Which one!? There's so many!) and swap between it. It was very difficult to build a habit when I could just listen to music.

anonsivalley652 7y ago

Welcome to clickbait headlines world: where telling truth is a revolutionary act that might get you killed (in the most extreme cases that embarrass the warmongers). Anyhow, take two of the podcasters I happen to listen to: - Michael Moore's Rumble - MM's complete focus until things get better - Steve Lehto's Lehto's Law - Lemon law, legal and other stories both stream to Youtube also, which are subject to two or more completely different corporate masters. It seems like a silly suggestion if there's no technical, legal or economic barriers to publishing to N platforms to suggest podcasters are locked-in. If someone were deplatformed from YT and Spotify, there's Twitch, Floatplane and Vimeo and hundreds of others. A sensible creator should have a website at a minimum to sell merch and link to social media, and have backup content sites and backup means of monetization (in-content, sponsored, and/or patreon/paypal direct). I think the big platforms are making it more and more difficult for small creators to make money, but I also think creators, large and small, need to diversify and protect themselves from being dependent on or being locked-into exclusive deals with any one corporate platform. OTOH, paraphrasing Chris Hedges, public commons and public discourse have been replaced with corporate platforms, public-private "partnerships" and mixed-use shopping areas. Slowly-but-surely, a number of corporations are gobbling us up and making us subject to their arbitrary whims (Youtube's opaque processes to handle copyright and fair-use). He refers to it by the name "inverted totalitarianism".. corporations subvert democracy with unlimited "speech" PAC money, manufacture consent through PR messaging, Cambridge Analytica's and troll factories to shift sentiment in desired ways, and possess immense control over individuals to express themselves and make a living that's not obvious until it's used, the effects of which are rarely obvious to other people.

reagent_finder 7y ago
Calling a well-researched and crafted, long thoughtpiece clickbait rattles my nettles. I feel a lot of people mentioning individual podcasts in this thread is missing the point -- if the masses see Spotify as the place to find podcasts in, that's where they'll find podcasts in. If ad money moves there, content creators will move there, and draw a lot of people with them. Of course podcasters aren't going to be locked-in, neither will advertisers or listeners, but there will be a significant lure to just going on Spotify. What's your first reaction when you want to find a video? You go on YouTube. What's your first reaction when you want to find a solution to a silly problem you're sure a solution exists? You go to Google. What's your first reaction when you want to watch someone stream a computer game? You go to Twitch. THAT is what Spotify wants here. They want to be the first or at least be in contention to being the first whenever anyone wants to find something audio-related. Music, new albums, and apparently now podcasts. They're already a household name so when a normal person hears that there are good podcasts on Spotify they'll just go "oh huh, that makes sense" and if they get interested they might check one out. I'd like to say I'll keep an eye out for this but honestly who has the energy? A year from now someone will make a nice graphic showing how many podcasters have transitioned to Spotify and how it's affected the field. I find the clarion call to lawmakers both optimistic and naïve, blocking a merger because Spotify MIGHT cause platform stagnation in 15 years is just never going to happen.

zsolt-beringer 7y ago

My main concern about publishing monopolies is that they are obsolete in terms of quality control. Censorship has its right to prevent abuse and so on. But I think for well established free thinkers who are far from any extremities (CGP Grey comes to me as a great example) should thrive towards federated networks. But I understand that advertising and mass media is getting more and more complicated. #ChomskyWasRight ;)

LaundroMat 7y ago

I suppose it would be illegal to offer an RSS feed of podcasts recorded off of Spotify?

bloogsy 7y ago

I think it could possibly ruin the 'big budget', glossy podcasts in the mould of Serial as they take more money to produce and I'd imagine they are more reliant on ad income. It may also be more accurate to suggest that Spotify will ruin American podcasting - I can't see UK podcasts (particularly those that are BBC-funded) going spotify only, and iPhones (and probably by extension the podcasts app) are only a huge market share in the US. Here's hoping that the independently funded and smaller podcasts will continue to exist outisde of Spotify.

Traster 7y ago
Yeah the BBC podcasts aren't going to go exclusive, but instead they've launched their own podcast app and piss everyone off by going on about it constantly.
- boygobbo 7y ago
  They might go exclusive to BBC Sounds. The BBC has already started pulling its services from those they perceive to be competitors, like TuneIn[1] and Google Podcast[2]. [1] https://radiotoday.co.uk/2019/08/bbc-to-pull-all-radio-services-from-tunein-uk-platform/ https://radiotoday.co.uk/2019/08/bbc-to-pull-all-radio-servi... [2] https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/27/bbc-removes-podcasts-google-podcasts-and-assistant https://www.thedrum.com/news/2019/03/27/bbc-removes-podcasts...

ejz 7y ago

The short answer: no. You will see some content go exclusive, but this is an inevitable feature of content-based markets. It's very difficult to differentiate yourself, and if you don't have your own content the content holders have the leverage to completely own you. It's what happened to Netflix. No one is complaining about them having their own shows. Spotify might even help. The US podcast market is stunted by the lack of good apps. Maybe with the power and money of a Spotify we can make a podcast app that lets providers make way more money, get way better analytics, and see actual feature-level innovation.

kristofferR 7y ago

Someone should create a service that generates RSS streams of Spotify exclusive podcasts. It would definitively be illegal, but that could be solved with proper opsec. It would definitively not be immoral.

Angostura 7y ago
> It would definitively be illegal Would it? Just a list of links to episodes in machine readable form? I can't see what issues it raise, unless it ignores a NOROBOTS
- 74ls00 7y ago
  The RSS feed would need links to the audio files - I suspect that Spotify only allows access to those through its app much as YouTube does through its app/website (this is what stops YouTube video podcast feeds from becoming a thing)
  - frodprefect 7y ago
    https://youtube-dl.org/ https://youtube-dl.org/ Always a workaround.
    - 74ls00 7y ago
      Well my assumption was how it could be achieved without violating Terms of Service
- corobo 7y ago
  I can't verify it right now but out of curiosity a while back I had a look and I'm sure Spotify were streaming their audio through websockets in some way - or at least linking to audio chunks in the websocket. You'd definitely have to download, remux, rehost the audio for it to work with podcast clients
  - Angostura 7y ago

blinotz 7y ago

Podcasting is perfect for big companies to wall off into their content gardens. AmaCasts YouGooCasts SpotCasts DisneyCasts AppleCasts Etc etc All it will take is a tiny tiny tiny bit of money by the standards of these companies to buy anything with an audience. Exactly the same at TV, you’ll need to find your podcast of choice on the channel that owns it.

spondyl 7y ago

I'll be the first to admit that I moved from Pocket Casts to Spotify at the start of the year, when I saw that my Year in Review featured podcasts. That's all it took, plus the convenience of having one singular app for music + podcasts. The only two podcasts I can't get on Spotify are Joe Rogan (I listen to like 1 out of every 500 episodes so will just download an MP3 or whatever) and a private RSS feed for Popular Front which I back on Patreon. It gives me the shits though that the Podcast section feels like an MVP still. There are no public API endpoints (not sure any podcast apps have them publically to be fair) and the desktop experience is subpar at best. Not even sure the play interval syncs up Perhaps I should take this opportunity to reassess my choice and move back to Pocket Casts. I was one of the original purchasers so I have a free lifetime subscription it seems. It looks like they have some desktop apps too (UWP + Mac) which seems new

AJRF 7y ago

As it stands Spotify apps are trash for listening to (or finding) anything other than popular music. Podcasts, Classical music, or anything that doesn't fit the mould of Artist -> Album -> Track just doesn't fit their domain models.

trekrich 7y ago

I listen to No Agenda! they won’t be going to Spotify!

nxpnsv 7y ago

Spotify has plenty of healthy competition. Audible also tries. Both players are poorly optimized for podcast consumption. They could learn lots from overcast...

billpg 7y ago

I use an RSS based podcast player for my drive to work and back. If a show doesn't have an RSS, I can't listen to it. I'm not going to jump to someone's website or switch between player apps while I'm driving along the M1. If you want to listen to your show, I'd need to switch player apps entirely and listen to all my shows on that other player.

bogomipz 7y ago

The author states: >"With most users going through either Google properties or Facebook properties, these corporations could then de-commodify the ad value of a publisher ad slot." Could someone say what is meant by "de-commodify the ad value of a publisher ad slot." and how it is "decomodified"?

yreg 7y ago

Marco, the creator of Overcast debates this situation from time to time on Accidental Tech Podcast. He recently said that Spotify doesn't seem to be as big an issue as they first expected it to be. It turns out, that most users who listen to podcasts on Spotify didn't listen to podcasts before. So although Spotify has a sizeable chunk of the market, it didn't hurt the other players much.

rahuldottech 7y ago
Yeah, except Spotify exclusives. They're forcing us to use a proprietary platform that's not accessible on all devices and operating systems (music players, non-smart phones, etc). That goes against the very open spirit of podcasting technology.
- yreg 7y ago
  Yep, Stitcher.com does the same. It's a shame, I hope they won't suck too many great podcasts up.
benhurmarcel 7y ago
> It turns out, that most users who listen to podcasts on Spotify didn't listen to podcasts before. Probably like music, where a lot of the people who listen on Spotify didn't pay for music before.

hising 7y ago

From a personal point-of-view I am more into the not so professional podcasts and as soon as a popular podcast starts getting too serious and starts sounding like any radio show out there, I lose interest. The same with Youtube, I like the creativity and drive of people when they start a channel or podcast about some subject they really enjoy. I think a lot of podcasts dies for me when I notice that they are more focused on getting a bigger audience and cater for more than what they did in the first place. I realize why, it is about having the money to be able to do it for a living, but from a personal point-of-view, I totally lose interest when stuff gets too professional. So, in my mind, Spotify wont kill podcasting, they will help some podcasters to gain a living from it and maybe become mainstream, but there will always be room for an open podcast community when new podcasts start from a desire and interest in a specific area of interest and not from what a mega-company think will gain a lot of listeners.

rchaud 7y ago

> Recently, Spotify announced a new advertising service, Spotify Podcast Ads with what’s called ‘streaming ad insertion.’ Oh good, the Adsense-ification of podcast ads is now upon us. Why bother having the talent read out the ads and maybe inject some improvisation and humour into it, when we can just have the real-time-bidding system decide what commercial you should see, based on whatever Spotify has stitched together using all its data points.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
pythonaut_16 7y ago
On the other hand, the potential value to the Podcast is a better long term revenue stream from old content. Most likely a worse experience as listener though. And you could make the argument it's worse for the ecosystem/community/relationship between Podcast and listener as well.

ryuukk_ 7y ago

Spotify saved podcasts it was becoming extinct, now gain of popularity because: - easy to discover - easy to manage feeds/playlists - easy to subscribe to favorite podcasts all in a single place another attempt at spreading FUDs against an European company FUCK AMERICA, FUCK USA, FUCK U

C1sc0cat 7y ago

When the 5th line mentions "democratic party cartel" I switch off author is the sort of person that gave us the disastrous magic grandpa ak Jeremy Corbin.

jccalhoun 7y ago

Spotify won't ruin podcasts any more than apple has. Right now if someone only posts a link to apple podcasts and not their rss then it makes it much less likely that I'll check out their show because I use android. The same thing will happen if someone posts a link to spotify. If you make it harder for me to get your product then I'll be less likely to bother.

matrixagent 7y ago
Good luck getting a non-tech person listening to a podcast by supplying them with an RSS link. I don't mean to be snarky, and I hate it from the bottom of my heart, but it's the sad reality. For 99,999% of people, a RSS link is not just making it "harder" to get to the product, it's making it impossible. They won't bother.
- jeena 7y ago
  If it's a link (button) and you press it, AntennaPod will open it in it's UI and let you subscribe if you want to.
  - matrixagent 7y ago
    Which requires AntennaPod to be manually installed, which "normal people" won't do. (Either because they already have Spotify or Apple Podcasts or because they simply don't care enough.)
- jccalhoun 7y ago
  Good luck getting an android person to listen to you podcast by supplying them with a link to apple. You don't have to just have one or the other. Have all the links. They are free.
  - matrixagent 7y ago
    Completely agreed, your comment made it sound like you were suggesting only RSS instead of any vendor-specific links to me, but I misunderstood. :)

buzzdenver 7y ago

This might be a noob question, but what is the right way to listen to podcasts on Spotify? They recently bought the company that produces half of the podcasts I listen to, Gimlet, so I wanted to see if it was a better experience using them. I devoted 5 minutes to it, but so far I wasn't able to figure out the basics, like subscribing to podcasts and seeing what's in the queue to listen to.

chadlavi 7y ago

If you don't want this to happen, support small podcast networks (which are essentially unions) like Maximum Fun.

jkhdigital 7y ago

There's no right answer here. Platforms (aka utilities in the real world) are wonderful sources of economic value but they are also natural monopolies. It appears that the promised land of monopoly profits are what drives capital to invest in building and improving platforms in the first place, so at what point do you impose the heavy hand of regulation to avoid abuse of monopoly power?

gsich 7y ago

Short answer: yes. But then again, a podcast needs a RSS feed. Not worth calling it a podcast otherwise.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

swiley 7y ago

Patreon already has an rss reader in its app doesn’t it? Why bother with Spotify.

JohnFen 7y ago

> Spotify is directly mimicking Google and Facebook, and attempting to roll up power over digital audio markets the way Google and Facebook did over the internet. There was always something about Spotify that made me very, very nervous. Although I could never put my finger on it, it did mean that I have never felt comfortable enough to use it. This statement provided me with a moment of realization, though -- this is what made me nervous about Spotify. It's also why I will never begin to use their service -- even if they manage to deprive me of the podcasts that I currently value.

jasonm89 7y ago

I've been paying for Spotify for 5 years, but I now only use it strictly for music. I find their UI for podcasts to be unintuitive and confusing, hoping they can update it soon.

apotatopot 7y ago

Sounds like they purchased Anchor for the ad insertion feature. IMO, as a podcast producer, this is a great thing. That said, Anchor currently lets us publish our podcast almost everywhere we'd like to. I can totally see Anchor being turned into Spotify: the podcast host, then that being done away with. I guess that's when we leave Anchor. I don't know, though. I hate having to run ads and how we never get support, but have reached something like 150 plays a week in a year. I hate to sound like a jerk, but if people paid producers instead of subscribing to companies, the world may be a better place.