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The whole (non-Spotify, ugh) podcast ecosystem would like a word about RSS being obsolete. Patreon (and to a greater extent, the podcasters I support) keep mak

The whole (non-Spotify, ugh) podcast ecosystem would like a word about RSS being obsolete. Patreon (and to a greater extent, the podcasters I support) keep making real money out of me and millions of others every month for personalised RSS feeds for content. That RSS feed is the delivery vehicle. It's very reliable, I can use it in any app, much good, so benefit, wow.

mfer 5y ago
This is a great example of RSS being useful while almost no one realizes is. People have podcast players. There are podcasts. They subscribe to them. RSS is the technology behind the scenes that powers it which almost no one notices. I bet that most podcast listeners don't know what RSS is or how it impacts their ability to listen to podcasts. Podcasts also present a different problem from most news. People want to listen to a podcast and know about episodes. A platform can't easily come in and alter the flow of episodes coming without consumers noticing and being annoyed. This works for RSS. With other news the aggregating platforms want to manipulate the flow of information for their benefit. If I look at my home in Twitter I might see posts from hours or days ago at the top. It's about engagement and they manipulate the order and display of posts to aide that. Their business model doesn't fit well with RSS as a backing technology. Note, I can't stand the manipulation of my news feed. I just understand the business and other factors behind it.
- gpvos 5y ago
  I think there are lots of people who think RSS is only for podcasts.
- soco 5y ago
  I read my news (yes including HN) on the Feedbro extension for Firefox, I wouldn't bother to go over most of newssites otherwise. 5/5 highly recommended.
sneak 5y ago
Most of the listeners of podcasts have moved on to technologies that do not rely on RSS. RSS was like podcasting 1.0. Now people consume podcasts on integrated, centralized platforms.
- swaggyBoatswain 5y ago
  Not true. I wrote my own RSS distribution feed for my podcast, codechefs.dev. Every major service integration (Spotify, iTunes, google Podcast, pocketcasts) subscribes to an RSS feed. That's how it knows when a new episode is uploaded. Those MP3 assets are not hosted on Spotify, iTunes, etc, I host them on my own s3 bucket distributed with mp3 links in the RSS. I'm sure if your a really big podcaster like Joe Rogan things may be different, but everyone else uses RSS feeds "Integrated centralized platforms" like anchor.fm etc just publishes an RSS feed to those same services and hosts the mp3s for you on an S3 bucket Moving away from RSS doesn't solve anything
- ydlr 5y ago
  I was under the impression that Apple Podcasts was the most popular podcast platform. It absolutely does rely on RSS. I assume most others do, as well.
oauea 5y ago
> The whole (non-Spotify, ugh) podcast ecosystem would like a word about RSS being obsolete Off topic, but it's insane how Spotify insists on advertising podcasts to paying users. Worse, they advertise podcasts of American right wing extremists, and call it "Something you might like" or similar offensive wording. I'm not even American, and I'm subjected to unwanted foreign political content on my music player's home page. I contacted their support about this, and apparently they are getting paid to advertise these podcasts to their already paying users.
- redwall_hp 5y ago
  Spotify isn't even American...they started in Sweden and operated in the EU for years before coming to the US. It was a big deal when they finally opened up here. Their disgusting partnership with right-wing degenerates is bizarre as well as obnoxious.
- applebees123 5y ago
  [flagged]

mfer 5y ago

This is a great example of RSS being useful while almost no one realizes is. People have podcast players. There are podcasts. They subscribe to them. RSS is the technology behind the scenes that powers it which almost no one notices. I bet that most podcast listeners don't know what RSS is or how it impacts their ability to listen to podcasts. Podcasts also present a different problem from most news. People want to listen to a podcast and know about episodes. A platform can't easily come in and alter the flow of episodes coming without consumers noticing and being annoyed. This works for RSS. With other news the aggregating platforms want to manipulate the flow of information for their benefit. If I look at my home in Twitter I might see posts from hours or days ago at the top. It's about engagement and they manipulate the order and display of posts to aide that. Their business model doesn't fit well with RSS as a backing technology. Note, I can't stand the manipulation of my news feed. I just understand the business and other factors behind it.

gpvos 5y ago
I think there are lots of people who think RSS is only for podcasts.
soco 5y ago
I read my news (yes including HN) on the Feedbro extension for Firefox, I wouldn't bother to go over most of newssites otherwise. 5/5 highly recommended.

sneak 5y ago

Most of the listeners of podcasts have moved on to technologies that do not rely on RSS. RSS was like podcasting 1.0. Now people consume podcasts on integrated, centralized platforms.

swaggyBoatswain 5y ago
Not true. I wrote my own RSS distribution feed for my podcast, codechefs.dev. Every major service integration (Spotify, iTunes, google Podcast, pocketcasts) subscribes to an RSS feed. That's how it knows when a new episode is uploaded. Those MP3 assets are not hosted on Spotify, iTunes, etc, I host them on my own s3 bucket distributed with mp3 links in the RSS. I'm sure if your a really big podcaster like Joe Rogan things may be different, but everyone else uses RSS feeds "Integrated centralized platforms" like anchor.fm etc just publishes an RSS feed to those same services and hosts the mp3s for you on an S3 bucket Moving away from RSS doesn't solve anything
ydlr 5y ago
I was under the impression that Apple Podcasts was the most popular podcast platform. It absolutely does rely on RSS. I assume most others do, as well.

oauea 5y ago

> The whole (non-Spotify, ugh) podcast ecosystem would like a word about RSS being obsolete Off topic, but it's insane how Spotify insists on advertising podcasts to paying users. Worse, they advertise podcasts of American right wing extremists, and call it "Something you might like" or similar offensive wording. I'm not even American, and I'm subjected to unwanted foreign political content on my music player's home page. I contacted their support about this, and apparently they are getting paid to advertise these podcasts to their already paying users.

redwall_hp 5y ago
Spotify isn't even American...they started in Sweden and operated in the EU for years before coming to the US. It was a big deal when they finally opened up here. Their disgusting partnership with right-wing degenerates is bizarre as well as obnoxious.
applebees123 5y ago
[flagged]