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Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle? And if you support paywalled podcasts, what, in your mind, would

Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle? And if you support paywalled podcasts, what, in your mind, would be the correct way for Spotify to implement them? (I'm genuinely curious your answer, but to lay my cards and biases on the table: I prefer paid podcasts to the ad supported ones; I'm tired of hearing all the Casper and Squarespace ads woven into the content. And I have trouble imagining a typical Spotify listener (interested in, say, Joe Rogan podcast) properly moving a personalized premium RSS feed into another client without a ton of chaos and confusion.)

pwinnski 4y ago
As ctoth said in cousin comment, HTTP Basic Auth seems to work well for content like that: https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss It's open, no proprietary client required. I, for one, am not totally against the idea of paid-subscription-only podcasts, though I hope they don't completely push out free podcasts.
joshstrange 4y ago
> Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle? I have zero issue in paywalled podcasts, in fact I pay about $35/mo across various podcasts. Every single one of those gives me a special RSS feed with a token in the URL. There is no need for a service/platform to support this, it works perfectly today. A few of those podcasts are from Patreon and they have support for this built in (not that the "tech" behind this is groundbreaking). I almost always pay if it's an option because I abhor ads in every form. I don't listen to many "mass market" podcasts, I think the largest podcast I listen to regularly (aside from some NPR ones I occasionally listen to) is ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast, which probably pales in comparison to the "Serials" and similar) and they offer a subscription ($8/mo).

pwinnski 4y ago

As ctoth said in cousin comment, HTTP Basic Auth seems to work well for content like that: https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss https://subscriber-id:subscriber-token@podcast.host/feed.rss It's open, no proprietary client required. I, for one, am not totally against the idea of paid-subscription-only podcasts, though I hope they don't completely push out free podcasts.

joshstrange 4y ago

> Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle? I have zero issue in paywalled podcasts, in fact I pay about $35/mo across various podcasts. Every single one of those gives me a special RSS feed with a token in the URL. There is no need for a service/platform to support this, it works perfectly today. A few of those podcasts are from Patreon and they have support for this built in (not that the "tech" behind this is groundbreaking). I almost always pay if it's an option because I abhor ads in every form. I don't listen to many "mass market" podcasts, I think the largest podcast I listen to regularly (aside from some NPR ones I occasionally listen to) is ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast, which probably pales in comparison to the "Serials" and similar) and they offer a subscription ($8/mo).