22 ms·

Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

453 points by dede4metal 5y ago

1cvmask 5y ago
Wonder how the removal and censorship of podcasts will affect content makers: https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast-episodes-removed-spotify-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...
- xnyan 5y ago
  I think calling this censorship is like saying Applebee's censors beer because they stock Bud Lite over Old Rasputin. Spotify is the owner of the content and pulled those episodes for the same reason all mass marketed content gravitates to the bland and benign - bland and benign is easier to sell to a large mass of people. Joe Rogan was free (not just free, well compensated) as an indy and could have kept his lucrative gig, but spotify dumped a truck load of money in his lawn and he decided he'd rather have that. They even told him up front they were going to remove episodes, and the contract made it clear they could keep going. It's not really censorship when the creator decided to pull episodes to make their content more appealing to a mass audience of people in order to make more money.
  - throwaway3699 5y ago
    The real issue is the audience care about those historical conversations. The Alex Jones podcast was probably the most hilarious JRE episode full stop. I'm not going to get outraged but I don't care to watch as many episodes as I did.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    > Joe Rogan was free (not just free, well compensated) as an indy and could have kept his lucrative gig, but spotify dumped a truck load of money in his lawn and he decided he'd rather have that. I mean obviously we can't know for sure without access to his finances, but I remember seeing some estimates that he could've earned the amount of money Spotify gave to him in like two years or so. So his choice was money upfront or earning it via traditional means in a couple of years. In my view, he made the wrong choice. I'm faced with a similar dilemma right now (but with losing money instead of gaining it) by investing in a NAS that would pay off in a little over two years by downscaling the servers I'm renting.
    - matwood 5y ago
      > In my view, he made the wrong choice. I agree, but it's his choice to make. Money in the hand today is better than tomorrow. As a very casual JRE listener, he's completely gone from my radar since he moved to Spotify. Reminds me a lot of when Stern went to satellite. The show lost its widespread relevance almost overnight. And when the show loses relevance, it becomes harder to get the best guests and it becomes a slow downward spiral to bland/repetitive.
jollybean 5y ago
Some very good insights that do not support the headline statement of 'how Spotify kills the system'. Music distribution can be complex, with multiple parties, it's not easy to even get listed on Apple etc., so that's a situation where verticalisation is power. But Podcasting is very much open season, anyone can do it and there are multiple 'open' channels. I don't think anyone has any qualms about jumping away from Spotify to follow their favorite podcaster. Of all the shenanigans going on with exclusivity, monopoly, privacy, this is not on the big list of worries.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
frankzander 5y ago
This is a serious topic IMHO
intpx 5y ago
This post is essentially a funding pitch for Spotify. I talks a lot about they are going to try and kill the open podcast ecosystem but no evidence that they are making any progress. The podcast ecosystem is very different from other media markets-- it started open, it grew up open, and people are actually willing to directly pay content producers either for bonus content, to avoid ad reads, or just to keep the train chugging along. I immediately unsub from any podcast where there is some jarring dynamic ad insertion. I've watch all of the once great Gimlet podcasts wither, and some die since their acquisition. Yea there is a market for the low-est common denominator stuff like low-brow true crime stuff and the joe rogans, but I don't see those as competition, either for sponsors or ears to the healthy, robust, mature open podcast ecosystem.
- the_snooze 5y ago
  >to avoid ad reads Even without paying for podcasts, ad reads in podcasts are pretty much the most consumer-friendly form of advertising on the internet. There's no privacy invasion. The ads are pretty well targeted because podcast producers generally know and try to respect their audiences. And they can even be pretty funny and entertaining when hosts can stray a bit off-script.
  - vlunkr 5y ago
    Plus you can always skip them with a couple of button presses.
    - mertd 5y ago
      I can see a future where podcasts move to a walled garden (Spotify) and the fast forward button gets disabled during ads.
      - hahajk 5y ago
        haha, yeah like dvds. i then imagine a world with pirate directories you subscribe to with the current podcast players
aylons 5y ago
RSS (Rich Site Summary)? Wasn't it Real Simple Syndication?
- danpalmer 5y ago
  Yep. https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification
brandonmenc 5y ago
I don't really consider these things "podcasts" anymore. There are a couple (imo, "real") podcasts I subscribe to and pay for, but I pay the creators directly and they generally self-host the files. Any other business model is just a network-exclusive TV or radio show, not a podcast.
- jonpurdy 5y ago
  I agree; they shouldn't be called podcasts if they don't conform to RSS and don't work in standard podcast apps. They're time-shifted audio shows sure, but not podcasts.
  - ojosilva 5y ago
    Oh, I seriously thought your reply would be that they should not be called podcasts [1] since that's more of an iPod thing. Or at least with the same modus operandi of downloading files (published from iTunes or RSS or whatever) to listen to later. But then, maybe I'm just too old. Or maybe podcasts have just evolved again, and now it's reincarnation is into streaming platforms and clubhouse rooms. [1] This is where the word was invented, according to the Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.digitalmedia https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.d...
  - bscphil 5y ago
    Yep, I was going to say that it was actually Apple Music / Podcasts that killed podcasts, because that was the first site I saw podcast creators exclusively link to versus an aggregator or RSS feed. It marked the turning of the tide, where it even started to be considered acceptable not to have an RSS feed. To be fair, this effect was limited at the time to "podcasts" released by relatively wealthy people mostly in New York, among whom not using Apple products was basically unheard of. Spotify seems to be taking this mainstream, but I think the problem started before they got into the podcast business.
- rchaud 5y ago
  > Any other business model is just a network-exclusive TV or radio show, not a podcast. That's where the money is. Spotify isn't a tech company, it's a radio station that exists to sell subscriptions plus ads.
post_break 5y ago
Meanwhile I guess apple stopped accepting new podcasts into their database and people are spreading rumors of a new paid podcasts+ subscription model launching today. Which I hope falls flat. Podcasts should be free and accessible to anyone.
- raiyu 5y ago
  Perhaps, but on the other hand, if someone like Joe Rogan had a paid for subscription plan where you were paying him directly, instead of being forced into a membership with Spotify, would that in a sense be more open, in that you are able to vote directly with your cash who you are listening to? Of course, if its an apple product, in a sense you are tied in to their system, but if it's successful, other paid for podcast variants could appear and then Joe Rogan can syndicate it to numerous vendors which have a pay-wall.
  - post_break 5y ago
    I believe paying someone directly for an exclusive podcast makes more sense than paying to be on a platform. The whole idea of a podcast is for it to be accessible on any device using any player of their choice, and spotify does not fit that idea. I'm not saying my mindset is the "correct" one but how I feel. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and there are some premium ones where you pay to get access, but once you pay, the way you access them is basically the same as all other podcasts. Hiding the actual podcast behind a certain protocol is what I raise an eyebrow to. Also, this is my opinion only, spotify is terrible at podcasts from a usability standpoint.
  - slg 5y ago
    >if someone like Joe Rogan had a paid for subscription plan where you were paying him directly, instead of being forced into a membership with Spotify, would that in a sense be more open Yes, because podcasts were previously open on numerous fronts. Any person can create a podcast that can be listened to be any person on any device. That is three points of openness. Adding a price on only restrict one of those points, the "listened to by any person". It still wouldn't stop any person's ability to create them or any device's ability to play them. Spotify (and presumably Apple) restricts both those points of openness too.
raverbashing 5y ago
Whenever I can I listen to podcasts on their original websites. But there's usually one downside: their players are bad (seeking, skipping forwards/backwards) (I am also aware that bandwidth/deployment is not so easy for small producers)
- rchaud 5y ago
  Usually the MP3 source file is exposed on the web page. Sometimes I can right click and hit "Save as" and download the file directly (works on mobile too). Other times I have to use an extension like DownloadHelper that locates the file path in the DOM and downloads it.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  > bandwidth/deployment is not so easy for small producers I don't get this one. Isn't that extraordinarily easy when you're small? Host it on a raspberry pi at home if you have fiber, or if you need to pay for bandwidth that's on the order of $5 for 10k downloads, assuming 100 minutes of 128kbps mp3 (insert napkin math disclaimer).
dna_polymerase 5y ago
I guess I don't know the right podcasts, but in my opinion, most of them are lazy marketing efforts by large corporations. I don't want to listen to native ads. And this is basically everything Spotify seems to suggest to me in the podcast section. I fled Soundcloud because they couldn't get their shit together, it seems Spotify won't be competing forever as well. Their app has random stutters on modern hardware, and is cluttered with podcast stuff. All I want is music. I liked JRE, but even as a Spotify user, I don't listen to him anymore.
- romanhn 5y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "cluttered with podcast stuff". I'm a happy Spotify user and I'm barely aware that the podcast stuff exists.
  - falcolas 5y ago
    It's gotten worse recently. The second row on my home screen are now dedicated to "Spotify original & exclusive shows" (when it used to be your weekly recommendation channels). There's another 2-3 rows dedicated to podcasts as you keep going down. For reference, I don't listen to podcasts in Spotify.
  - dna_polymerase 5y ago
    Maybe we are in different A/B groups but for me the podcasts are now in row 3 minimum, sometimes in the second row on home screen. So at times I see them.
    - romanhn 5y ago
      Fair enough. I never linger on the home screen and head straight to playlist/liked music, so I suppose it's not something that's ever jumped out at me.
- towb 5y ago
  >I liked JRE, but even as a Spotify user, I don't listen to him anymore. I used this long podcasts to fall asleep to but had to stop now with spotify. I cast it to a google home mini and set the volume to pretty low, so I just can hear what they say pretty much, but at a random point spotify stops it and plays an ad at volume level 9000+ and doesn't resume play. How bad isn't that? Oh and Joe is getting less likeable lately... not sure if we should blame spotify for throwing all that money on him or what...
prepend 5y ago
I don’t like Spotify’s player or their process for restricted access podcasts. “Free” isn’t free when it requires a special app. Podcasts using RSS was genius and a great “protocol” for distributing content that fit into the original web idea of information available anywhere. I hope Spotify loses and regular podcasts stick and thrive. I’m more worried about people like NPR requiring their own app x 1000.
- m000 5y ago
  I'm pretty sure that Spotify's API allows access to podcasts outside the official app. I'm already using software that can stream Spotify content to local devices that don't support Spotify. Creating an RSS feed is only an implementation detail. And I wouldn't discount the publishing and distribution part of making a podcast content available. Without Spotify or a similar platform, the burden of putting content online, making it discoverable and getting audience analytics falls on the creators. I'm pretty sure that most creators would be pretty disinterested in spending time on these tasks.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    > I'm pretty sure that Spotify's API allows access to podcasts outside the official app. I wouldn't be too sure about this. I know its API (or at least some parts of it) are only available to premium users, because they can't serve ads via third-party integrations. I don't know if there's an exception for podcasts, but I wouldn't be surprised if your option is either the app or paying to not use the official app.
  - nmz 5y ago
    Disagree on this, like discord, third party apps are frowned upon. There is no youtube-dl for spotify (not a good one at least) so while I do agree that creators should not be burdened by the distribution aspect, spotify is ultimately vendor lock-in. while with itunes you can easily fetch the rss feed of their podcasts, such a thing is not possible with spotify.
  - prepend 5y ago
    No, I don’t think so. The api [0] only returns metadata and Spotify urls that are played in their player. There’s no way I can find to get the actual audio file or audio stream on binary format. Of course it also requires a Spotify dev account so that’s limiting too. I’m discounting the publishing and distribution part because we have examples of podcasts that moved from regular to Spotify (eg, JRE) and the content didn’t change at all. Podcasts are pretty awesome as the distribution costs are low and are pretty similar whether your distributing via Spotify or your own CDN. With regular you get discoverability via Apple and many others so that’s bigger than Spotify. This is a “solved” problem in that creators have been easily doing this for 10 years. The technical aspects are minimal and completely abstracted through many services available that are dollars per month. [0] https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/ https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc...
MentallyRetired 5y ago
We've seen this time and again where walled gardens provide a solid experience and end up winning consumer trust. How do the champions of FOSS battle this? I don't know, but I'm on board when someone figures it out.
- JustSomeNobody 5y ago
  > How do the champions of FOSS battle this? That's not easy. The problem is infrastructure and that costs money. Apps[0] that use distributed architectures, with rare exceptions, still just aren't non-nerd friendly. [0] In general, not podcast specific.
- rchaud 5y ago
  Media has never been FOSS. Radio stations do not play artists by random lottery, they play whoever paid up to get played.
- adamrezich 5y ago
  > How do the champions of FOSS battle this? "Podcasting 2.0" https://podcastindex.org/ https://podcastindex.org/
wenbin 5y ago
The open podcast system is growing strong: https://www.listennotes.com/podcast-stats/ https://www.listennotes.com/podcast-stats/ However, 50%+ of all rss-based podcasts are hosted on Anchor, which is owned by Spotify.
klelatti 5y ago
Joe who? Seriously, I think that there are a number of reasons why this won't pan out as predicted: - There aren't really any tent-pole, must listen podcasts. They thought Joe Rogan was one but I'm hearing a lot of people have stopped listening to him on Spotify (I have). - Spotify (and others) don't have the money to buy out the whole podcast ecosystem and many podcast makers I think would resist going Spotify exclusive. - I like my podcast player a lot and there is no way I'm giving it up for the inferior Spotify experience. I see podcasting as being more like YouTubing - sure there are outfits generating substantial revenue from advertising but many have more diverse revenue streams and reaching the largest audience is more important that an uplift in advertising revenue. Plus not everyone on YouTube is there for the $$$
- rchaud 5y ago
  Joe Rogan will occasionally have guests that attract people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in common JRE topics. In my case, it was podcasts with Billy Corgan and Shirley Manson (of Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage, respectively). I enjoyed those episodes a lot, plus a few he has with comedians I find funny. But it wasn't enough to make me subscribe. I doubt there is any podcast that I consider indispensable enough to subscribe.
  - edgyquant 5y ago
    The only podcasts I listen religiously are the intelligence by the economist and revolutions by Mike Duncan. I can listen to the intelligence via the economist app and Revolutions is ending this year (and I get it through the standard podcast app on iOS.)
    - mdoms 5y ago
      The Intelligence is available as a regular old podcast feed too - all Economist podcasts are.
    - peteretep 5y ago
      The Economist's iOS app means I have started listening to their podcast many many many times without wanting to. Particularly irritated when browsing in bed next to a sleeping wife.
mikece 5y ago
This is exactly why the co-inventor of podcasting, Adam Curry, launched the "Podcasting 2.0" initiative last year: https://podnews.net/update/podcast-index-open-directory https://podnews.net/update/podcast-index-open-directory
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  I also like his "value for value" model: https://www.entrepreneurability.nl/2020/12/04/the-emergence-of-the-value-for-value-model/?lang=en https://www.entrepreneurability.nl/2020/12/04/the-emergence-...
mrweasel 5y ago
Do Spotify actually manage to sell any significant number of subscriptions due to podcasts? Personally when ever I hear about an interesting podcast, and it's followed by "available on Spotify/Podimo, whatever", my reaction is always: Okay, never mind then. There are so many great podcasts on the open web. Those available on platforms like Spotify always seems to be people with existing celebrity status trying to "cash in". Those shows are rarely that interesting, and even if they are there are so many competitors. Assuming you have an existing successful podcast, I don't get why you'd move to something like Spotify. Are you really going to make that much more money? Your share of $10 per month cannot be high. Of cause it Spotify throws a large sum at you, to effectively buy your listeners, then I see the profit motive.
- mvolfik 5y ago
  Beware though that "available on Spotify" (idk Podimo) doesn't necessarily mean that it's exclusive there. But it's very common around here and many people use it for convenience (and the podcasts can advertise it as "look we are in this fancy mainstream app", not weird (?) RSS, while they likely offer that too). I myself used Spotify for freely available podcasts too, only recently switched to Podcast Addict for nerdy automatic download settings
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    I believe Spotify, unless they buy an exclusive or something, still consumes RSS feeds to make podcasts work, so most anything on Spotify is freely available.
    - hobofan 5y ago
      Yes. Started a podcast that's available on Spotify, which is as straightforward as entering the RSS feed URL of your podcast. I'm surprised they don't offer free hosting for podcasts directly via their platform, given all the other investments they are making in the space.
- cosmodisk 5y ago
  Don't underestimate it longer term. I rarely,if ever, listen to podcasts and I don't use Spotify, however Spotify is already a household brand. It's like Netflix: every time I speak to someone about a movie,or a series,the first question is whether it's on Netflix and if the answer is No,they often get disappointed.
LatteLazy 5y ago
Aside from Joe Rogan (who's gone a bit barmy) I have no problem getting rss feeds for everything I want...
- pixxel 5y ago
  Barmy? I've not listened since his move to Spotify. What's happened?
  - tpmx 5y ago
    The Spotify move sort of coincided with him moving from LA to Austin. After that move he's not been getting many interesting guests. Lately it feels like it's been a 45/45/10 mix of (to me) uninteresting comedians, uninteresting martial arts personalities and misc. Sometimes there's someone interesting in the misc category.
    - pixxel 5y ago
      I see. Perhaps COVID has impacted quality guests from travelling, and poorer quality guests are more willing to travel. Just a guess.
      - tpmx 5y ago
        Yeah, seems like it.
  - Spinnaker_ 5y ago
    People have been saying this every year for half a decade now. But it's the same podcast as it ever was. Eric Weinstein was fantastic, Freddie Gibbs and Brian Moses were hilarious, Tim Dillion was the exact amount of ridiculous you'd expect. Then there's the episodes with professors like Brian Greene and Avi Loeb, and then fighters like GSP and Dan Gable. Nothing has changed except the platform.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    He's been pretty far along the "Covid isn't a real problem", "I'm not getting vaccinated", you can treat it with honey and mustard and HydroChloroquine arc...
throwawaysea 5y ago
Podcasts are one of the last best ways to get high quality content with easy access to ideological diversity. Given that Spotify practices censorship of content, like with the Joe Rogan podcast, I simply can't trust them with control of such an ecosystem. It would be creating another monster like we already have in so many other parts of our information economy. And I say this as a long-time paying subscriber of Spotify. Frankly their attempt to conquer podcasts makes me want to cancel my subscription. As an aside, I've also found Spotify's presentation of podcasts to be very jarring and confrontational. For example, the Spotify home screen features grouped podcast episodes under progressive banners like "Learn about voter suppression". The podcast episodes it features are, as you might expect, all from one side of the political spectrum. I am not a fan of these companies trying to program the public based on the politics of their executives and employees. It's insulting, and just completely not in the spirit of the open podcast world.
somehnguy 5y ago
They might have a better chance if their podcast experience had even one competent engineer working on it. I truly don't know how they managed to flub it so bad. By far the worst podcast player/manager around!
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  The people running the company now might be primarily media people rather than tech people. In such situations, there's a tendency to highly value media ("It's what we sell to customers!") and undervalue the infrastructure that makes selling that media possible. Spotify's public fights between management and employees can't be good for recruitment either. If you're an engineer trying to decide between two jobs that are similar in compensation but one has been in the press for labor unrest and the other hasn't, you're probably going to go with the less controversial employer.
JI00912 5y ago
Points for getting Joe rogan: +50 Points for censorship: -1000 Spotify is not taking over.
nxpnsv 5y ago
I like Spotify for music. But i hate it for other content. I like overcast for podcasts. It’s not just ui, i like having separate channels separate. I wouldn’t want my movie in Spotify either.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  They also integrated it in the dumbest way ever. You have to click music on the bottom and then move your finger all the way to the top of the screen to click podcasts, then wait for the animation, and then finally you can click on downloads, wait for that to load (requires internet for some reason), and select what you want to play. Antennapod made me lose track of things (too many views if I remember correctly, been a few years) and had UX issues of its own, but I'm seriously considering switching back. I've unsubscribed from anything that's Spotify exclusive because I hate walled gardens (I'm happy to pay Spotify a cut to listen to and pay artists, but not if then nobody else who doesn't have Spotify can't listen to those artists, too) so that's not what's keeping me in anyhow.
alangibson 5y ago
Patreon is (currently) the counterweight keeping Spotify from sucking up a critical mass of the high quality podcasts. If Patreon were to fold for some reason, you might see a lot of professional podcasters heading under Spotify's wing just out of necessity.
hnburnsy 5y ago
JRE RSS for any podcast player... https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk Many thanks to Tim Dorr for creating this, works for any Spotify podcast... https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/ https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/
- dont__panic 5y ago
  While this is a really cool project, personally I think we should just let any Spotify-exclusive podcast die instead of feeding the beast. I absolutely hate that my Spotify Premium music subscription dollars are being funneled into exclusive podcasts and attempts to force podcasts down my throat via recommendations all over the app.
- messo 5y ago
  Thanks! I did enjoy the occasional JRE podcast before he sold out to Spotify. This way I can keep an eye on the feed in case he has some interesting folks on.
mouldysammich 5y ago
I sincerely hope they don't, but also i don't think they will. I've never come across music i cant get outside of spotify, i don't see why it would happen with podcasts. I dont listen to a huge number but all the podcasts i listen to are available outside of it on one of the seemingly millions of podcast hosting services. Patreon is really cool in this area as i can support podcasts i like and patreon provide a rss feed you can use which is quite delightful.
nacho2sweet 5y ago
I loved spotify for music suggestions and playlists, but are finding it highly annoying lately for the podcasts it keeps trying to push at me taking up prime real-estate in the app. Like for example if I open it now the second row is a whole list of podcast about "Get Educated about Voter Suppression". All that stuff sucks for you guys but I am Canadian and don't want to listen to 5 podcasts about American voting. I only listen to podcasts on my iphone and already have a nice feed in the podcast app, I am good. I haven't even listened to more then 3 hours of podcasts in the last year since I am not on transit every day with covid/work from home.
jrochkind1 5y ago
Podcasts may literally be the last major content category on the internet that is still open/inter-operable/syndicated. (remember when we thought RSS and Atom were really going to go far?). Maybe not for long.
- rchaud 5y ago
  It was open until people realized that they could make significant money off of it. Then the walls started going up.
  - cerved 5y ago
    It was open until people realized they couldn't make any significant money off it that way
zild3d 5y ago
Spotify also made podcast ads as terrible as TV/radio. I was never bothered by podcast ads since it was coming straight from the podcaster. E.g. Tim Ferriss - for the most part I trusted he actually supported the products. Comedians, the ad reads are often pretty funny Spotify instead interrupts the podcast whenever they want with "HEY! <radio ad voice selling a product>"
- allenu 5y ago
  Yeah, it's really awful. Many podcasts I choose to listen to because the hosts have soothing voices and there isn't any annoying yelling, but when Spotify inserts the ads in there, it absolutely ruins the experience since the ads are so jarring when compared to the podcast itself.
lolive 5y ago
I searched for my favorite podcasts on Spotify. No result found. So as a first approach, for me, this is a fail.
- blfr 5y ago
  What are you favourite podcasts?
manigandham 5y ago
Interestingly Apple just launched paid subscriptions in Apple Podcasts: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-leads-the-next-chapter-of-podcasting-with-apple-podcasts-subscriptions/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-leads-the-next-...
gsich 5y ago
Podcasts without RSS are not podcasts.
armoredkitten 5y ago
I find it interesting to see the emphasis on algorithmic discovery here. I know that's Spotify's game, but podcasts just work much differently than how many people consume music content. Podcasts fit much more in the subscription model where you find a podcast you like and get alerted to new episodes (from the same producer) as they come out. They tend to be a steadier stream of content -- per week, couple of weeks, whatever -- rather than musicians dropping an album of songs all at once. And they, of course, tend to be longer-form content than your typical 2-5 minute song. Of course, there's still some room for algorithmic discovery here -- you listen to this podcast, you might like that one too. But I currently subscribe to more podcasts than I can comfortably listen to already. I don't typically want new suggestions. Maybe a friend tells me about a one-off interesting episode from a podcast I don't subscribe to, and I might listen to that on their website or whatever. But I struggle to see the particular advantage that Spotify brings to the podcast ecosystem over the traditional RSS subscription model that already exists. There may be benefits to the producers, but I don't see much for the consumers. I just consume music very differently than I consume podcasts.
asimovfan 5y ago
The "open ecosystem" of periodically releasing audio files cannot be killed by a company. I never listen to any podcast on spotify and I listen to a few.
lchengify 5y ago
I run a small podcast. Over the past year I've watched as my traffic has slowly shifted from Apple being completely dominant (> 90% of traffic), to it being a 70/30 split between Spotify and Apple. My honest take on the situation is that Apple has let its podcast ecosystem languish, and Spotify is moving in to build the product users actually want. Here's just a handful of things Apple has failed to address to podcast publishers: - Apple Podcast search is terrible. At best, it looks at some of the notes / title metadata and does a global popularity ranking, with no regard for the actual spoken content of the podcast. This drives down discoverability and ultimately winds up creating a ton of "tentpole" hits but no long-tail. - Review / listener / ranking fraud is rampant. You can look on fiverr and find all sorts of "jobs" for driving up downloads, etc, and Apple doesn't do a great job of policing this behavior. Same for managing brigading / clusters of bad reviews that all mysteriously appear at the same time from new users. - Very little community support for growth. No social features. People wind up going elsewhere (twitter / yotube / etc) for discoverability and audience building. - No monetization strategy for publishers. - No recommendation outside of "top hits" in categories or featured podcasts. - No transparency into what it takes to get to "top hits" or featured podcasts. - Second-rate sync'ing between web, laptop, and mobile players for listeners - No way to get any Android users into the ecosystem (yes yes, I know, but there are 4 billion Android users. Either be a content platform or don't, but don't pretend like 2/3rds of the world doesn't exist). Overall if you think about how long Apple has "owned" podcasts (> 11 years) vs something like YouTube, you can see where they dropped the ball. YouTube isn't perfect but it has everything I listed above, and because of that it's ultimately the big draw for creators. This is so much so, that Descript has a whole toolchain about just getting podcasts into audiograms to get onto youtube to ... get people to go to Apple and find their podcast. Overall I don't love what Spotify is doing, especially since it's so nakedly a transparent land grab. However I can't blame them for building something people want when the dominant player has done nothing for a decade. And candidly, Apple is primarily a hardware company, secondarily a software company, and is a tertiary mainstream content provider. For indie podcasters, we are at best ... quaternary? I should not be surprised Apple doesn't care about my little podcast when it can make money other ways. Lastly, just to be transparent about what I see in my own metrics, all other podcast providers (Google, Castbox, etc) are a super long tail and far from Spotify or Apple. They're just nowhere close.
IceHegel 5y ago
I mostly use Spotify for their music discovery. Podcast discovery is still really bad. Youtube is probably the place I find most podcasts. If Spotify wants to dominate podcasts, they need great, hyper-personal podcast discovery.
jmfldn 5y ago
Podcasts are a symbol of the open web for me. They're free by and large, and largely not controlled by a walled garden platform. I can choose any number of apps to consume them. It's sad to see some big ones moving away from this model. Just on Spotify specifically, it's a terrible client for podcasts. It feels like they've just bolted the feature onto the wrong product.
GNU_James 5y ago
And? I don't use spotify and you shouldn't use that proprietary crap either.
nmz 5y ago
Embrace and extinguish.
coldacid 5y ago
I can't believe I didn't notice right away that this "article" is a native ad for Spotify. Ugh. Meanwhile, the open podcast ecosystem keeps getting better instead of dying off like Spotify and Apple wish it would. [Podcast Index] and the Podcasting 2.0 ecosystem around it is helping keep podcasting free and open. * https://podcastindex.org https://podcastindex.org
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Can't quite say that I found it to be casting Spotify in a positive light, which seems odd if you think it's an ad.
- bscphil 5y ago
  Is it really? Is there evidence of this? (Honestly asking, I'm curious about the prevalence of native advertising and astroturfing.) From their about page, the author appears to work for Oracle and has a similar article praising an Apple product that I remember doing big numbers here at HN when it came out.
SeanFerree 5y ago
I'm not a fan of Spotify. It seems that greed has taken them over
jrochkind1 5y ago
I still listen to podcasts on an... iPod. (iPod Nano, 2010 6th gen). That's something I can't do with the spotify-hosted ones.
diogenescynic 5y ago
Spotify will fail like Sirius/XM did. Sure, they'll exist and some customers will pay the premium but the podcasts will be largely irrelevant. Joe Rogan has already basically dropped off the radar, just like Howard Stern did. And the artists/hosts who take the offers to go private/exclusive will become less relevant.
rapnie 5y ago
Check Castopod. Open, decentralized Podcasts on the Fediverse.. "Castopod Host is an open-source server made for podcasters who want engage and interact with their audience." It is still under development, but looks very interesting. https://podlibre.org/author/castopod/ https://podlibre.org/author/castopod/ Submitted separately: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882081 (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the project)
lobocinza 5y ago
I switched to AntennaPod and VLC. I realized I don't need algorithmic recommendations or streaming. I know what I want and my phone has plenty free space.
- lucb1e 5y ago
  Also, for anyone who (like me) doesn't regularly keep up with micro-SD prices, you may be happy to find that 128GB cards are now dirt cheap. You don't have to juggle what's on your phone anymore. I don't know when this happened, but that's multiple months' worth of audio with all your internal storage free for pictures or the like.
  - lobocinza 5y ago
    > You don't have to juggle what's on your phone anymore. Unfortunately, sometimes you have. Apps can not moved to SD card depending on Android version or vendor. Also, I use a Syncthing oneway folder to automatic sync downloaded music to phone.
    - lucb1e 5y ago
      > Apps can not moved to SD card but data can; you'd put the audio on the sd card. If you have to juggle the number of installed apps, yeah that I can't help
      - lobocinza 5y ago
        Sure. I personally have plenty of free space on the internal memory but some friends with not so old but entry phones do have this problem.
whall6 5y ago
Bad timing considering Apple just announced that they’re monetizing podcasts too.
King-Aaron 5y ago
There's a couple of podcasts I listen to on Spotify (I'm already paying for premium, so might as well). The main two are Lorehammer and The Smoking Tyre. I didn't mind it too much until their latest UI update that killed the ability to see which episodes you've listened to previously. That absolutely drives me nuts. Its more maddening that I'm friends with one of the devs, and he just laughs when I complain :P
FlashBlaze 5y ago
Apart from the exclusives which Spotify has, can someone give an example of any other advantages over an app like PocketCasts?
yalogin 5y ago
Spotify sure is trying to turn podcasts into a subscription service. They buy as many as possible and add them to their subscription model is their plan. They at least get ad revenue if people don't move off their app. Luckily the landscape of podcasts will not allow them to do that. There are way too many podcasts that are popular and make money. So buying all of them will be impossible. In a way they are similar to the open source landscape. Sure, there exist Apache, mysql etc but the ones that are not popular are equally important for the medium.
joaonmatos 5y ago
To provide a counterpoint to comments here, I only started listening podcasts when Spotify added them and know they are the most important use of the app for me now. If tomorrow Spotify removed podcasts from the apps, I'd probably cancel my subscription and move on to YouTube video essays or something.
- Siira 5y ago
  Well, you're better served to just migrate to an open podcast app like Overcast, PocketCast, Podcast Addict, etc. Their player is better than Spotify by an order of magnitude anyway.
johnchristopher 5y ago
Podcast providers are also killing the open podcast without Spotify's help. France culture and France Inter recently removed their audio files older than 2 months (give or take) from their servers and they are only accessible through the official smartphone app. Old links now points to a generic 20 seconds jingle that says the file is not available anymore but you may download the official application to listen to it. Of course there are missing podcasts in the official app. And now I have holes in podcast series that weren't completely downloaded. Yesterday the official app prompted me for advertising and tracking cookies.
xtnmclain 5y ago
Spotify is creating a monopoly in the podcast industry; it is only a matter of time before all the big names will flock to the platform because of its users and profits. It also helps the podcast to be discoverable by new users.
perryizgr8 5y ago
It seems that Spotify is under pressure to keep growing revenue, even at the cost of diluting the original purpose of the company. In an ideal world, they would focus on the glitches and bugs, and making sure new and old music keeps getting added to the collection. Nothing else is required. No podcasts, no ads, no videos, nothing.
tke248 5y ago
Their video platform also sucks, I haven't got to enjoy joe rogan as much since he moved over

453 points by dede4metal 5y ago

Wonder how the removal and censorship of podcasts will affect content makers: https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast-episodes-removed-spotify-2021-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...

xnyan 5y ago
I think calling this censorship is like saying Applebee's censors beer because they stock Bud Lite over Old Rasputin. Spotify is the owner of the content and pulled those episodes for the same reason all mass marketed content gravitates to the bland and benign - bland and benign is easier to sell to a large mass of people. Joe Rogan was free (not just free, well compensated) as an indy and could have kept his lucrative gig, but spotify dumped a truck load of money in his lawn and he decided he'd rather have that. They even told him up front they were going to remove episodes, and the contract made it clear they could keep going. It's not really censorship when the creator decided to pull episodes to make their content more appealing to a mass audience of people in order to make more money.
- throwaway3699 5y ago
  The real issue is the audience care about those historical conversations. The Alex Jones podcast was probably the most hilarious JRE episode full stop. I'm not going to get outraged but I don't care to watch as many episodes as I did.
- input_sh 5y ago
  > Joe Rogan was free (not just free, well compensated) as an indy and could have kept his lucrative gig, but spotify dumped a truck load of money in his lawn and he decided he'd rather have that. I mean obviously we can't know for sure without access to his finances, but I remember seeing some estimates that he could've earned the amount of money Spotify gave to him in like two years or so. So his choice was money upfront or earning it via traditional means in a couple of years. In my view, he made the wrong choice. I'm faced with a similar dilemma right now (but with losing money instead of gaining it) by investing in a NAS that would pay off in a little over two years by downscaling the servers I'm renting.
  - matwood 5y ago
    > In my view, he made the wrong choice. I agree, but it's his choice to make. Money in the hand today is better than tomorrow. As a very casual JRE listener, he's completely gone from my radar since he moved to Spotify. Reminds me a lot of when Stern went to satellite. The show lost its widespread relevance almost overnight. And when the show loses relevance, it becomes harder to get the best guests and it becomes a slow downward spiral to bland/repetitive.

jollybean 5y ago

Some very good insights that do not support the headline statement of 'how Spotify kills the system'. Music distribution can be complex, with multiple parties, it's not easy to even get listed on Apple etc., so that's a situation where verticalisation is power. But Podcasting is very much open season, anyone can do it and there are multiple 'open' channels. I don't think anyone has any qualms about jumping away from Spotify to follow their favorite podcaster. Of all the shenanigans going on with exclusivity, monopoly, privacy, this is not on the big list of worries.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

frankzander 5y ago

This is a serious topic IMHO

intpx 5y ago

This post is essentially a funding pitch for Spotify. I talks a lot about they are going to try and kill the open podcast ecosystem but no evidence that they are making any progress. The podcast ecosystem is very different from other media markets-- it started open, it grew up open, and people are actually willing to directly pay content producers either for bonus content, to avoid ad reads, or just to keep the train chugging along. I immediately unsub from any podcast where there is some jarring dynamic ad insertion. I've watch all of the once great Gimlet podcasts wither, and some die since their acquisition. Yea there is a market for the low-est common denominator stuff like low-brow true crime stuff and the joe rogans, but I don't see those as competition, either for sponsors or ears to the healthy, robust, mature open podcast ecosystem.

the_snooze 5y ago
>to avoid ad reads Even without paying for podcasts, ad reads in podcasts are pretty much the most consumer-friendly form of advertising on the internet. There's no privacy invasion. The ads are pretty well targeted because podcast producers generally know and try to respect their audiences. And they can even be pretty funny and entertaining when hosts can stray a bit off-script.
- vlunkr 5y ago
  Plus you can always skip them with a couple of button presses.
  - mertd 5y ago
    I can see a future where podcasts move to a walled garden (Spotify) and the fast forward button gets disabled during ads.
    - hahajk 5y ago
      haha, yeah like dvds. i then imagine a world with pirate directories you subscribe to with the current podcast players

aylons 5y ago

RSS (Rich Site Summary)? Wasn't it Real Simple Syndication?

danpalmer 5y ago
Yep. https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification

brandonmenc 5y ago

I don't really consider these things "podcasts" anymore. There are a couple (imo, "real") podcasts I subscribe to and pay for, but I pay the creators directly and they generally self-host the files. Any other business model is just a network-exclusive TV or radio show, not a podcast.

jonpurdy 5y ago
I agree; they shouldn't be called podcasts if they don't conform to RSS and don't work in standard podcast apps. They're time-shifted audio shows sure, but not podcasts.
- ojosilva 5y ago
  Oh, I seriously thought your reply would be that they should not be called podcasts [1] since that's more of an iPod thing. Or at least with the same modus operandi of downloading files (published from iTunes or RSS or whatever) to listen to later. But then, maybe I'm just too old. Or maybe podcasts have just evolved again, and now it's reincarnation is into streaming platforms and clubhouse rooms. [1] This is where the word was invented, according to the Wikipedia: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.digitalmedia https://www.theguardian.com/media/2004/feb/12/broadcasting.d...
- bscphil 5y ago
  Yep, I was going to say that it was actually Apple Music / Podcasts that killed podcasts, because that was the first site I saw podcast creators exclusively link to versus an aggregator or RSS feed. It marked the turning of the tide, where it even started to be considered acceptable not to have an RSS feed. To be fair, this effect was limited at the time to "podcasts" released by relatively wealthy people mostly in New York, among whom not using Apple products was basically unheard of. Spotify seems to be taking this mainstream, but I think the problem started before they got into the podcast business.
rchaud 5y ago
> Any other business model is just a network-exclusive TV or radio show, not a podcast. That's where the money is. Spotify isn't a tech company, it's a radio station that exists to sell subscriptions plus ads.

post_break 5y ago

Meanwhile I guess apple stopped accepting new podcasts into their database and people are spreading rumors of a new paid podcasts+ subscription model launching today. Which I hope falls flat. Podcasts should be free and accessible to anyone.

raiyu 5y ago
Perhaps, but on the other hand, if someone like Joe Rogan had a paid for subscription plan where you were paying him directly, instead of being forced into a membership with Spotify, would that in a sense be more open, in that you are able to vote directly with your cash who you are listening to? Of course, if its an apple product, in a sense you are tied in to their system, but if it's successful, other paid for podcast variants could appear and then Joe Rogan can syndicate it to numerous vendors which have a pay-wall.
- post_break 5y ago
  I believe paying someone directly for an exclusive podcast makes more sense than paying to be on a platform. The whole idea of a podcast is for it to be accessible on any device using any player of their choice, and spotify does not fit that idea. I'm not saying my mindset is the "correct" one but how I feel. I listen to a lot of podcasts, and there are some premium ones where you pay to get access, but once you pay, the way you access them is basically the same as all other podcasts. Hiding the actual podcast behind a certain protocol is what I raise an eyebrow to. Also, this is my opinion only, spotify is terrible at podcasts from a usability standpoint.
- slg 5y ago
  >if someone like Joe Rogan had a paid for subscription plan where you were paying him directly, instead of being forced into a membership with Spotify, would that in a sense be more open Yes, because podcasts were previously open on numerous fronts. Any person can create a podcast that can be listened to be any person on any device. That is three points of openness. Adding a price on only restrict one of those points, the "listened to by any person". It still wouldn't stop any person's ability to create them or any device's ability to play them. Spotify (and presumably Apple) restricts both those points of openness too.

raverbashing 5y ago

Whenever I can I listen to podcasts on their original websites. But there's usually one downside: their players are bad (seeking, skipping forwards/backwards) (I am also aware that bandwidth/deployment is not so easy for small producers)

rchaud 5y ago
Usually the MP3 source file is exposed on the web page. Sometimes I can right click and hit "Save as" and download the file directly (works on mobile too). Other times I have to use an extension like DownloadHelper that locates the file path in the DOM and downloads it.
lucb1e 5y ago
> bandwidth/deployment is not so easy for small producers I don't get this one. Isn't that extraordinarily easy when you're small? Host it on a raspberry pi at home if you have fiber, or if you need to pay for bandwidth that's on the order of $5 for 10k downloads, assuming 100 minutes of 128kbps mp3 (insert napkin math disclaimer).

dna_polymerase 5y ago

I guess I don't know the right podcasts, but in my opinion, most of them are lazy marketing efforts by large corporations. I don't want to listen to native ads. And this is basically everything Spotify seems to suggest to me in the podcast section. I fled Soundcloud because they couldn't get their shit together, it seems Spotify won't be competing forever as well. Their app has random stutters on modern hardware, and is cluttered with podcast stuff. All I want is music. I liked JRE, but even as a Spotify user, I don't listen to him anymore.

romanhn 5y ago
Not sure what you mean by "cluttered with podcast stuff". I'm a happy Spotify user and I'm barely aware that the podcast stuff exists.
- falcolas 5y ago
  It's gotten worse recently. The second row on my home screen are now dedicated to "Spotify original & exclusive shows" (when it used to be your weekly recommendation channels). There's another 2-3 rows dedicated to podcasts as you keep going down. For reference, I don't listen to podcasts in Spotify.
- dna_polymerase 5y ago
  Maybe we are in different A/B groups but for me the podcasts are now in row 3 minimum, sometimes in the second row on home screen. So at times I see them.
  - romanhn 5y ago
    Fair enough. I never linger on the home screen and head straight to playlist/liked music, so I suppose it's not something that's ever jumped out at me.
towb 5y ago
>I liked JRE, but even as a Spotify user, I don't listen to him anymore. I used this long podcasts to fall asleep to but had to stop now with spotify. I cast it to a google home mini and set the volume to pretty low, so I just can hear what they say pretty much, but at a random point spotify stops it and plays an ad at volume level 9000+ and doesn't resume play. How bad isn't that? Oh and Joe is getting less likeable lately... not sure if we should blame spotify for throwing all that money on him or what...

prepend 5y ago

I don’t like Spotify’s player or their process for restricted access podcasts. “Free” isn’t free when it requires a special app. Podcasts using RSS was genius and a great “protocol” for distributing content that fit into the original web idea of information available anywhere. I hope Spotify loses and regular podcasts stick and thrive. I’m more worried about people like NPR requiring their own app x 1000.

m000 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that Spotify's API allows access to podcasts outside the official app. I'm already using software that can stream Spotify content to local devices that don't support Spotify. Creating an RSS feed is only an implementation detail. And I wouldn't discount the publishing and distribution part of making a podcast content available. Without Spotify or a similar platform, the burden of putting content online, making it discoverable and getting audience analytics falls on the creators. I'm pretty sure that most creators would be pretty disinterested in spending time on these tasks.
- input_sh 5y ago
  > I'm pretty sure that Spotify's API allows access to podcasts outside the official app. I wouldn't be too sure about this. I know its API (or at least some parts of it) are only available to premium users, because they can't serve ads via third-party integrations. I don't know if there's an exception for podcasts, but I wouldn't be surprised if your option is either the app or paying to not use the official app.
- nmz 5y ago
  Disagree on this, like discord, third party apps are frowned upon. There is no youtube-dl for spotify (not a good one at least) so while I do agree that creators should not be burdened by the distribution aspect, spotify is ultimately vendor lock-in. while with itunes you can easily fetch the rss feed of their podcasts, such a thing is not possible with spotify.
- prepend 5y ago
  No, I don’t think so. The api [0] only returns metadata and Spotify urls that are played in their player. There’s no way I can find to get the actual audio file or audio stream on binary format. Of course it also requires a Spotify dev account so that’s limiting too. I’m discounting the publishing and distribution part because we have examples of podcasts that moved from regular to Spotify (eg, JRE) and the content didn’t change at all. Podcasts are pretty awesome as the distribution costs are low and are pretty similar whether your distributing via Spotify or your own CDN. With regular you get discoverability via Apple and many others so that’s bigger than Spotify. This is a “solved” problem in that creators have been easily doing this for 10 years. The technical aspects are minimal and completely abstracted through many services available that are dollars per month. [0] https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/reference/ https://developer.spotify.com/documentation/web-api/referenc...

MentallyRetired 5y ago

We've seen this time and again where walled gardens provide a solid experience and end up winning consumer trust. How do the champions of FOSS battle this? I don't know, but I'm on board when someone figures it out.

JustSomeNobody 5y ago
> How do the champions of FOSS battle this? That's not easy. The problem is infrastructure and that costs money. Apps[0] that use distributed architectures, with rare exceptions, still just aren't non-nerd friendly. [0] In general, not podcast specific.
rchaud 5y ago
Media has never been FOSS. Radio stations do not play artists by random lottery, they play whoever paid up to get played.
adamrezich 5y ago
> How do the champions of FOSS battle this? "Podcasting 2.0" https://podcastindex.org/ https://podcastindex.org/

wenbin 5y ago

The open podcast system is growing strong: https://www.listennotes.com/podcast-stats/ https://www.listennotes.com/podcast-stats/ However, 50%+ of all rss-based podcasts are hosted on Anchor, which is owned by Spotify.

klelatti 5y ago

Joe who? Seriously, I think that there are a number of reasons why this won't pan out as predicted: - There aren't really any tent-pole, must listen podcasts. They thought Joe Rogan was one but I'm hearing a lot of people have stopped listening to him on Spotify (I have). - Spotify (and others) don't have the money to buy out the whole podcast ecosystem and many podcast makers I think would resist going Spotify exclusive. - I like my podcast player a lot and there is no way I'm giving it up for the inferior Spotify experience. I see podcasting as being more like YouTubing - sure there are outfits generating substantial revenue from advertising but many have more diverse revenue streams and reaching the largest audience is more important that an uplift in advertising revenue. Plus not everyone on YouTube is there for the $$$

rchaud 5y ago
Joe Rogan will occasionally have guests that attract people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in common JRE topics. In my case, it was podcasts with Billy Corgan and Shirley Manson (of Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage, respectively). I enjoyed those episodes a lot, plus a few he has with comedians I find funny. But it wasn't enough to make me subscribe. I doubt there is any podcast that I consider indispensable enough to subscribe.
- edgyquant 5y ago
  The only podcasts I listen religiously are the intelligence by the economist and revolutions by Mike Duncan. I can listen to the intelligence via the economist app and Revolutions is ending this year (and I get it through the standard podcast app on iOS.)
  - mdoms 5y ago
    The Intelligence is available as a regular old podcast feed too - all Economist podcasts are.
  - peteretep 5y ago
    The Economist's iOS app means I have started listening to their podcast many many many times without wanting to. Particularly irritated when browsing in bed next to a sleeping wife.

mikece 5y ago

This is exactly why the co-inventor of podcasting, Adam Curry, launched the "Podcasting 2.0" initiative last year: https://podnews.net/update/podcast-index-open-directory https://podnews.net/update/podcast-index-open-directory

brandonmenc 5y ago
I also like his "value for value" model: https://www.entrepreneurability.nl/2020/12/04/the-emergence-of-the-value-for-value-model/?lang=en https://www.entrepreneurability.nl/2020/12/04/the-emergence-...

mrweasel 5y ago

Do Spotify actually manage to sell any significant number of subscriptions due to podcasts? Personally when ever I hear about an interesting podcast, and it's followed by "available on Spotify/Podimo, whatever", my reaction is always: Okay, never mind then. There are so many great podcasts on the open web. Those available on platforms like Spotify always seems to be people with existing celebrity status trying to "cash in". Those shows are rarely that interesting, and even if they are there are so many competitors. Assuming you have an existing successful podcast, I don't get why you'd move to something like Spotify. Are you really going to make that much more money? Your share of $10 per month cannot be high. Of cause it Spotify throws a large sum at you, to effectively buy your listeners, then I see the profit motive.

mvolfik 5y ago
Beware though that "available on Spotify" (idk Podimo) doesn't necessarily mean that it's exclusive there. But it's very common around here and many people use it for convenience (and the podcasts can advertise it as "look we are in this fancy mainstream app", not weird (?) RSS, while they likely offer that too). I myself used Spotify for freely available podcasts too, only recently switched to Podcast Addict for nerdy automatic download settings
- jackson1442 5y ago
  I believe Spotify, unless they buy an exclusive or something, still consumes RSS feeds to make podcasts work, so most anything on Spotify is freely available.
  - hobofan 5y ago
    Yes. Started a podcast that's available on Spotify, which is as straightforward as entering the RSS feed URL of your podcast. I'm surprised they don't offer free hosting for podcasts directly via their platform, given all the other investments they are making in the space.
cosmodisk 5y ago
Don't underestimate it longer term. I rarely,if ever, listen to podcasts and I don't use Spotify, however Spotify is already a household brand. It's like Netflix: every time I speak to someone about a movie,or a series,the first question is whether it's on Netflix and if the answer is No,they often get disappointed.

LatteLazy 5y ago

Aside from Joe Rogan (who's gone a bit barmy) I have no problem getting rss feeds for everything I want...

pixxel 5y ago
Barmy? I've not listened since his move to Spotify. What's happened?
- tpmx 5y ago
  The Spotify move sort of coincided with him moving from LA to Austin. After that move he's not been getting many interesting guests. Lately it feels like it's been a 45/45/10 mix of (to me) uninteresting comedians, uninteresting martial arts personalities and misc. Sometimes there's someone interesting in the misc category.
  - pixxel 5y ago
    I see. Perhaps COVID has impacted quality guests from travelling, and poorer quality guests are more willing to travel. Just a guess.
    - tpmx 5y ago
      Yeah, seems like it.
- Spinnaker_ 5y ago
  People have been saying this every year for half a decade now. But it's the same podcast as it ever was. Eric Weinstein was fantastic, Freddie Gibbs and Brian Moses were hilarious, Tim Dillion was the exact amount of ridiculous you'd expect. Then there's the episodes with professors like Brian Greene and Avi Loeb, and then fighters like GSP and Dan Gable. Nothing has changed except the platform.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  He's been pretty far along the "Covid isn't a real problem", "I'm not getting vaccinated", you can treat it with honey and mustard and HydroChloroquine arc...

throwawaysea 5y ago

Podcasts are one of the last best ways to get high quality content with easy access to ideological diversity. Given that Spotify practices censorship of content, like with the Joe Rogan podcast, I simply can't trust them with control of such an ecosystem. It would be creating another monster like we already have in so many other parts of our information economy. And I say this as a long-time paying subscriber of Spotify. Frankly their attempt to conquer podcasts makes me want to cancel my subscription. As an aside, I've also found Spotify's presentation of podcasts to be very jarring and confrontational. For example, the Spotify home screen features grouped podcast episodes under progressive banners like "Learn about voter suppression". The podcast episodes it features are, as you might expect, all from one side of the political spectrum. I am not a fan of these companies trying to program the public based on the politics of their executives and employees. It's insulting, and just completely not in the spirit of the open podcast world.

somehnguy 5y ago

They might have a better chance if their podcast experience had even one competent engineer working on it. I truly don't know how they managed to flub it so bad. By far the worst podcast player/manager around!

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
The people running the company now might be primarily media people rather than tech people. In such situations, there's a tendency to highly value media ("It's what we sell to customers!") and undervalue the infrastructure that makes selling that media possible. Spotify's public fights between management and employees can't be good for recruitment either. If you're an engineer trying to decide between two jobs that are similar in compensation but one has been in the press for labor unrest and the other hasn't, you're probably going to go with the less controversial employer.

JI00912 5y ago

Points for getting Joe rogan: +50 Points for censorship: -1000 Spotify is not taking over.

nxpnsv 5y ago

I like Spotify for music. But i hate it for other content. I like overcast for podcasts. It’s not just ui, i like having separate channels separate. I wouldn’t want my movie in Spotify either.

lucb1e 5y ago
They also integrated it in the dumbest way ever. You have to click music on the bottom and then move your finger all the way to the top of the screen to click podcasts, then wait for the animation, and then finally you can click on downloads, wait for that to load (requires internet for some reason), and select what you want to play. Antennapod made me lose track of things (too many views if I remember correctly, been a few years) and had UX issues of its own, but I'm seriously considering switching back. I've unsubscribed from anything that's Spotify exclusive because I hate walled gardens (I'm happy to pay Spotify a cut to listen to and pay artists, but not if then nobody else who doesn't have Spotify can't listen to those artists, too) so that's not what's keeping me in anyhow.

alangibson 5y ago

Patreon is (currently) the counterweight keeping Spotify from sucking up a critical mass of the high quality podcasts. If Patreon were to fold for some reason, you might see a lot of professional podcasters heading under Spotify's wing just out of necessity.

hnburnsy 5y ago

JRE RSS for any podcast player... https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk Many thanks to Tim Dorr for creating this, works for any Spotify podcast... https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/ https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/

dont__panic 5y ago
While this is a really cool project, personally I think we should just let any Spotify-exclusive podcast die instead of feeding the beast. I absolutely hate that my Spotify Premium music subscription dollars are being funneled into exclusive podcasts and attempts to force podcasts down my throat via recommendations all over the app.
messo 5y ago
Thanks! I did enjoy the occasional JRE podcast before he sold out to Spotify. This way I can keep an eye on the feed in case he has some interesting folks on.

mouldysammich 5y ago

I sincerely hope they don't, but also i don't think they will. I've never come across music i cant get outside of spotify, i don't see why it would happen with podcasts. I dont listen to a huge number but all the podcasts i listen to are available outside of it on one of the seemingly millions of podcast hosting services. Patreon is really cool in this area as i can support podcasts i like and patreon provide a rss feed you can use which is quite delightful.

nacho2sweet 5y ago

I loved spotify for music suggestions and playlists, but are finding it highly annoying lately for the podcasts it keeps trying to push at me taking up prime real-estate in the app. Like for example if I open it now the second row is a whole list of podcast about "Get Educated about Voter Suppression". All that stuff sucks for you guys but I am Canadian and don't want to listen to 5 podcasts about American voting. I only listen to podcasts on my iphone and already have a nice feed in the podcast app, I am good. I haven't even listened to more then 3 hours of podcasts in the last year since I am not on transit every day with covid/work from home.

jrochkind1 5y ago

Podcasts may literally be the last major content category on the internet that is still open/inter-operable/syndicated. (remember when we thought RSS and Atom were really going to go far?). Maybe not for long.

rchaud 5y ago
It was open until people realized that they could make significant money off of it. Then the walls started going up.
- cerved 5y ago
  It was open until people realized they couldn't make any significant money off it that way

zild3d 5y ago

Spotify also made podcast ads as terrible as TV/radio. I was never bothered by podcast ads since it was coming straight from the podcaster. E.g. Tim Ferriss - for the most part I trusted he actually supported the products. Comedians, the ad reads are often pretty funny Spotify instead interrupts the podcast whenever they want with "HEY! <radio ad voice selling a product>"

allenu 5y ago
Yeah, it's really awful. Many podcasts I choose to listen to because the hosts have soothing voices and there isn't any annoying yelling, but when Spotify inserts the ads in there, it absolutely ruins the experience since the ads are so jarring when compared to the podcast itself.

lolive 5y ago

I searched for my favorite podcasts on Spotify. No result found. So as a first approach, for me, this is a fail.

blfr 5y ago
What are you favourite podcasts?

manigandham 5y ago

Interestingly Apple just launched paid subscriptions in Apple Podcasts: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-leads-the-next-chapter-of-podcasting-with-apple-podcasts-subscriptions/ https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-leads-the-next-...

gsich 5y ago

Podcasts without RSS are not podcasts.

armoredkitten 5y ago

I find it interesting to see the emphasis on algorithmic discovery here. I know that's Spotify's game, but podcasts just work much differently than how many people consume music content. Podcasts fit much more in the subscription model where you find a podcast you like and get alerted to new episodes (from the same producer) as they come out. They tend to be a steadier stream of content -- per week, couple of weeks, whatever -- rather than musicians dropping an album of songs all at once. And they, of course, tend to be longer-form content than your typical 2-5 minute song. Of course, there's still some room for algorithmic discovery here -- you listen to this podcast, you might like that one too. But I currently subscribe to more podcasts than I can comfortably listen to already. I don't typically want new suggestions. Maybe a friend tells me about a one-off interesting episode from a podcast I don't subscribe to, and I might listen to that on their website or whatever. But I struggle to see the particular advantage that Spotify brings to the podcast ecosystem over the traditional RSS subscription model that already exists. There may be benefits to the producers, but I don't see much for the consumers. I just consume music very differently than I consume podcasts.

asimovfan 5y ago

The "open ecosystem" of periodically releasing audio files cannot be killed by a company. I never listen to any podcast on spotify and I listen to a few.

lchengify 5y ago

I run a small podcast. Over the past year I've watched as my traffic has slowly shifted from Apple being completely dominant (> 90% of traffic), to it being a 70/30 split between Spotify and Apple. My honest take on the situation is that Apple has let its podcast ecosystem languish, and Spotify is moving in to build the product users actually want. Here's just a handful of things Apple has failed to address to podcast publishers: - Apple Podcast search is terrible. At best, it looks at some of the notes / title metadata and does a global popularity ranking, with no regard for the actual spoken content of the podcast. This drives down discoverability and ultimately winds up creating a ton of "tentpole" hits but no long-tail. - Review / listener / ranking fraud is rampant. You can look on fiverr and find all sorts of "jobs" for driving up downloads, etc, and Apple doesn't do a great job of policing this behavior. Same for managing brigading / clusters of bad reviews that all mysteriously appear at the same time from new users. - Very little community support for growth. No social features. People wind up going elsewhere (twitter / yotube / etc) for discoverability and audience building. - No monetization strategy for publishers. - No recommendation outside of "top hits" in categories or featured podcasts. - No transparency into what it takes to get to "top hits" or featured podcasts. - Second-rate sync'ing between web, laptop, and mobile players for listeners - No way to get any Android users into the ecosystem (yes yes, I know, but there are 4 billion Android users. Either be a content platform or don't, but don't pretend like 2/3rds of the world doesn't exist). Overall if you think about how long Apple has "owned" podcasts (> 11 years) vs something like YouTube, you can see where they dropped the ball. YouTube isn't perfect but it has everything I listed above, and because of that it's ultimately the big draw for creators. This is so much so, that Descript has a whole toolchain about just getting podcasts into audiograms to get onto youtube to ... get people to go to Apple and find their podcast. Overall I don't love what Spotify is doing, especially since it's so nakedly a transparent land grab. However I can't blame them for building something people want when the dominant player has done nothing for a decade. And candidly, Apple is primarily a hardware company, secondarily a software company, and is a tertiary mainstream content provider. For indie podcasters, we are at best ... quaternary? I should not be surprised Apple doesn't care about my little podcast when it can make money other ways. Lastly, just to be transparent about what I see in my own metrics, all other podcast providers (Google, Castbox, etc) are a super long tail and far from Spotify or Apple. They're just nowhere close.

IceHegel 5y ago

I mostly use Spotify for their music discovery. Podcast discovery is still really bad. Youtube is probably the place I find most podcasts. If Spotify wants to dominate podcasts, they need great, hyper-personal podcast discovery.

jmfldn 5y ago

Podcasts are a symbol of the open web for me. They're free by and large, and largely not controlled by a walled garden platform. I can choose any number of apps to consume them. It's sad to see some big ones moving away from this model. Just on Spotify specifically, it's a terrible client for podcasts. It feels like they've just bolted the feature onto the wrong product.

GNU_James 5y ago

And? I don't use spotify and you shouldn't use that proprietary crap either.

nmz 5y ago

Embrace and extinguish.

coldacid 5y ago

I can't believe I didn't notice right away that this "article" is a native ad for Spotify. Ugh. Meanwhile, the open podcast ecosystem keeps getting better instead of dying off like Spotify and Apple wish it would. [Podcast Index] and the Podcasting 2.0 ecosystem around it is helping keep podcasting free and open. * https://podcastindex.org https://podcastindex.org

lucb1e 5y ago
Can't quite say that I found it to be casting Spotify in a positive light, which seems odd if you think it's an ad.
bscphil 5y ago
Is it really? Is there evidence of this? (Honestly asking, I'm curious about the prevalence of native advertising and astroturfing.) From their about page, the author appears to work for Oracle and has a similar article praising an Apple product that I remember doing big numbers here at HN when it came out.

SeanFerree 5y ago

I'm not a fan of Spotify. It seems that greed has taken them over

jrochkind1 5y ago

I still listen to podcasts on an... iPod. (iPod Nano, 2010 6th gen). That's something I can't do with the spotify-hosted ones.

diogenescynic 5y ago

Spotify will fail like Sirius/XM did. Sure, they'll exist and some customers will pay the premium but the podcasts will be largely irrelevant. Joe Rogan has already basically dropped off the radar, just like Howard Stern did. And the artists/hosts who take the offers to go private/exclusive will become less relevant.

rapnie 5y ago

Check Castopod. Open, decentralized Podcasts on the Fediverse.. "Castopod Host is an open-source server made for podcasters who want engage and interact with their audience." It is still under development, but looks very interesting. https://podlibre.org/author/castopod/ https://podlibre.org/author/castopod/ Submitted separately: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882081 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882081 (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the project)

lobocinza 5y ago

I switched to AntennaPod and VLC. I realized I don't need algorithmic recommendations or streaming. I know what I want and my phone has plenty free space.

lucb1e 5y ago
Also, for anyone who (like me) doesn't regularly keep up with micro-SD prices, you may be happy to find that 128GB cards are now dirt cheap. You don't have to juggle what's on your phone anymore. I don't know when this happened, but that's multiple months' worth of audio with all your internal storage free for pictures or the like.
- lobocinza 5y ago
  > You don't have to juggle what's on your phone anymore. Unfortunately, sometimes you have. Apps can not moved to SD card depending on Android version or vendor. Also, I use a Syncthing oneway folder to automatic sync downloaded music to phone.
  - lucb1e 5y ago
    > Apps can not moved to SD card but data can; you'd put the audio on the sd card. If you have to juggle the number of installed apps, yeah that I can't help
    - lobocinza 5y ago
      Sure. I personally have plenty of free space on the internal memory but some friends with not so old but entry phones do have this problem.

whall6 5y ago

Bad timing considering Apple just announced that they’re monetizing podcasts too.

King-Aaron 5y ago

There's a couple of podcasts I listen to on Spotify (I'm already paying for premium, so might as well). The main two are Lorehammer and The Smoking Tyre. I didn't mind it too much until their latest UI update that killed the ability to see which episodes you've listened to previously. That absolutely drives me nuts. Its more maddening that I'm friends with one of the devs, and he just laughs when I complain :P

FlashBlaze 5y ago

Apart from the exclusives which Spotify has, can someone give an example of any other advantages over an app like PocketCasts?

yalogin 5y ago

Spotify sure is trying to turn podcasts into a subscription service. They buy as many as possible and add them to their subscription model is their plan. They at least get ad revenue if people don't move off their app. Luckily the landscape of podcasts will not allow them to do that. There are way too many podcasts that are popular and make money. So buying all of them will be impossible. In a way they are similar to the open source landscape. Sure, there exist Apache, mysql etc but the ones that are not popular are equally important for the medium.

joaonmatos 5y ago

To provide a counterpoint to comments here, I only started listening podcasts when Spotify added them and know they are the most important use of the app for me now. If tomorrow Spotify removed podcasts from the apps, I'd probably cancel my subscription and move on to YouTube video essays or something.

Siira 5y ago
Well, you're better served to just migrate to an open podcast app like Overcast, PocketCast, Podcast Addict, etc. Their player is better than Spotify by an order of magnitude anyway.

johnchristopher 5y ago

Podcast providers are also killing the open podcast without Spotify's help. France culture and France Inter recently removed their audio files older than 2 months (give or take) from their servers and they are only accessible through the official smartphone app. Old links now points to a generic 20 seconds jingle that says the file is not available anymore but you may download the official application to listen to it. Of course there are missing podcasts in the official app. And now I have holes in podcast series that weren't completely downloaded. Yesterday the official app prompted me for advertising and tracking cookies.

xtnmclain 5y ago

Spotify is creating a monopoly in the podcast industry; it is only a matter of time before all the big names will flock to the platform because of its users and profits. It also helps the podcast to be discoverable by new users.

perryizgr8 5y ago

It seems that Spotify is under pressure to keep growing revenue, even at the cost of diluting the original purpose of the company. In an ideal world, they would focus on the glitches and bugs, and making sure new and old music keeps getting added to the collection. Nothing else is required. No podcasts, no ads, no videos, nothing.

tke248 5y ago

Their video platform also sucks, I haven't got to enjoy joe rogan as much since he moved over