7 ms·

Podcast technology is RSS. RSS is distribution. An MP3 or MP4 (or whatever Google uses) is just a container. Without distribution, it sits there doing nothing.

by Kye 3y ago

Podcast technology is RSS. RSS is distribution. An MP3 or MP4 (or whatever Google uses) is just a container. Without distribution, it sits there doing nothing. Being able to look up almost any podcast in any podcast app and find its RSS feed and subscribe to it directly without requiring any intermediary is a huge thing in this era of proprietary silos. That's the point he's getting at. Apple could go rogue tomorrow and start rehosting all podcasts in its directory, which most apps depend on, and I would still have my list in Overcast to go and get RSS feeds direct from the source.

epcoa 3y ago
> RSS is distribution It’s not content distribution. > get RSS feeds direct from the source. But what is the source? Who is typically hosting these? Audio is easier to distribute than video, but aren’t most podcasts hosted on a handful of large services?
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  There is one centralised bottleneck - Apple's iTunes podcast index / search API - which seemingly everyone else in the company has forgotten about and runs pretty openly for anyone to submit to and use. There are also a handful of essentially CDNs that host the .mp3 files themselves, but these are more or less completely interchangable. They're just infrastructure for hosting files.
  - black_puppydog 3y ago
    I'm a very (very, as in: too) avid podcast listener and the fact that apple run one of the biggest "phone books" has literally never stopped me from doing anything podcast related. I find new podcasts just fine, by word of mouth as well as in other directories. The only player in town that seems to really make a dent in the openness is Spotify which have been aggressively buying out podcast teams and taking them off the open web, and that's one of the prime reasons I cancelled my subscriptions. Then there's smaller losses like the BBC4 which made most of their podcasts have a 1 month delay vis-a-vis their own app. I have no interest in that. In effect, this just served to curb some of my compulsive newsy consumption. If something isn't important enough to still be heard a month later, maybe I didn't need to hear it in the first place. Anyhow, I very much agree with the article and I'm happy someone made the point so much more eloquently than I've managed in my many debates about the matter.
  - dabber 3y ago
    https://podcastindex.org/ https://podcastindex.org/ is a great.
    - RajT88 3y ago
      I use https://podcastaddict.com/ https://podcastaddict.com/ But thanks for posting this! Occasionally, I can't find a particular podcast on my preferred site.
      - dabber 3y ago
        So do I! Podcast Index is one of the built-in indexes in the Podcast Addict app's search feature; that's how I discovered it!
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  Almost every podcast I listen to comes from a different site. It's as easy as setting up an RSS feed on your own website, which is very comparable to hosting your own blog. Sure, plenty of people use Medium, but lots and lots still self-host.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  > It’s not content distribution. Yeah, this is what I thought. RSS will give a URL to a sound file, which is hosted by someone, somewhere. It doesn’t sound like there’s anything inherent to podcasts -- not even RSS even though it’s so ubiquitous -- which prevents the content distribution to be more centralized. If a podcast recording is exclusively hosted by Spotify, that is where everyone gets that podcast; even if they got the URL for it elsewhere. It’s a bit like saying I get my articles from HN (disregarding that I don’t use RSS for it).
- johnspurlock 3y ago
  > But what is the source? Who is typically hosting these? Audio is easier to distribute than video, but aren’t most podcasts hosted on a handful of large services? Top Podcast Hosting Companies by Episode Share: https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/ https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/ Top Podcast CDNs by Episode Share: https://livewire.io/podcast-cdns-by-episode-share/ https://livewire.io/podcast-cdns-by-episode-share/
dist-epoch 3y ago
You are not representative. The vast majority of podcast listeners subscribe a channel on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The vast majority of podcasts are served from similar centralized media companies. Which is why "JRE is moving from YouTube to Spotify for $200 mil" is a thing. If podcasts were decentralized you wouldn't "move" from one content company to another.
- madeofpalk 3y ago
  Which is why "Wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement.
  - dist-epoch 3y ago
    99% of people read that as "Whichever you prefer from Spotify/YouTube/Apple"
- skywhopper 3y ago
  But you can get 99% of the same podcasts via Apple as you can via Spotify or many other podcasting apps. Just like you can visit websites on almost any web browser. This used to be how everything was expected to work online, but that has changed dramatically, and for the worse. (Spotify is trying to break the openness of podcasting but they mostly haven’t managed to do so, yet.)
- jdauriemma 3y ago
  Could you elaborate a bit further? I don’t see why this is necessarily true.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Someone is hosting the sound file that’s ultimately played when the podcast is listened to. A sibling comment to yours is saying that JRE is newly to be hosted with multiple hosts, which is the only real step away from centralization. RSS is just providing the means for an up-to-date URL for the podcast episodes. At the end of the day, the podcast is served by one of these hosts, regardless of how it was discovered. It can be observed that they’re centralized when media companies make exclusive deals as Spotify attempted with JRE.
hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
I'd like a Really Simple Podcasts site where I can just log in with a username and a password, drag and drop an MP3 file from my computer, and have it get published as a new episode. Bliss.
- zrail 3y ago
  That's how most podcasting platforms work. For example, that's exactly how https://transistor.fm/ https://transistor.fm/ works. You make an account, upload an MP3, get an RSS feed.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    Yeah! This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you!
beeboobaa 3y ago
> Being able to look up almost any podcast in any podcast app and find its RSS feed and subscribe to it directly without requiring any intermediary is a huge thing in this era of proprietary silos. That's the point he's getting at. The sad part is this used to be completely normal. I remember browsing the web and most sites would show that little RSS icon in my browser indicating they have a feed available. But people are happy to let companies like apple run their lives for them and decide what they are allowed to consume, so now we have to act like this perfectly normal and reasonable thing is special. Yes, Siri. Thank you, Siri. May I watch another podcast, Siri?
- Kye 3y ago
  The RSS header is often still present. It's browsers that stopped supporting it.
  - beeboobaa 3y ago
    Not really, I have a browser extension that still shows it. Super rare now, which isn't surprising, because like you say the browsers don't show it by default anymore.
    - Kye 3y ago
      Right. Browsers stopped supporting it. Defaults matter. You can add a plugin for any obscure thing.
      - beeboobaa 3y ago
        I'm not sure what your point is, but I think we're basically agreeing? RSS and decentralized hosting used to be normal until the bigcorps got greedy and started manipulating the masses (by removing features from browsers and such) into believing walled gardens are the only way.
        colinsane 3y ago
        i think your point is that RSS used to be a norm on the consumption side, and is no longer; and GP's point is that it still is a norm on the publishing side, such that for the users who care -- like yourself -- the practical difference is not that large.

by Kye 3y ago

epcoa 3y ago

> RSS is distribution It’s not content distribution. > get RSS feeds direct from the source. But what is the source? Who is typically hosting these? Audio is easier to distribute than video, but aren’t most podcasts hosted on a handful of large services?

madeofpalk 3y ago
There is one centralised bottleneck - Apple's iTunes podcast index / search API - which seemingly everyone else in the company has forgotten about and runs pretty openly for anyone to submit to and use. There are also a handful of essentially CDNs that host the .mp3 files themselves, but these are more or less completely interchangable. They're just infrastructure for hosting files.
- black_puppydog 3y ago
  I'm a very (very, as in: too) avid podcast listener and the fact that apple run one of the biggest "phone books" has literally never stopped me from doing anything podcast related. I find new podcasts just fine, by word of mouth as well as in other directories. The only player in town that seems to really make a dent in the openness is Spotify which have been aggressively buying out podcast teams and taking them off the open web, and that's one of the prime reasons I cancelled my subscriptions. Then there's smaller losses like the BBC4 which made most of their podcasts have a 1 month delay vis-a-vis their own app. I have no interest in that. In effect, this just served to curb some of my compulsive newsy consumption. If something isn't important enough to still be heard a month later, maybe I didn't need to hear it in the first place. Anyhow, I very much agree with the article and I'm happy someone made the point so much more eloquently than I've managed in my many debates about the matter.
- dabber 3y ago
  https://podcastindex.org/ https://podcastindex.org/ is a great.
  - RajT88 3y ago
    I use https://podcastaddict.com/ https://podcastaddict.com/ But thanks for posting this! Occasionally, I can't find a particular podcast on my preferred site.
    - dabber 3y ago
      So do I! Podcast Index is one of the built-in indexes in the Podcast Addict app's search feature; that's how I discovered it!
IggleSniggle 3y ago
Almost every podcast I listen to comes from a different site. It's as easy as setting up an RSS feed on your own website, which is very comparable to hosting your own blog. Sure, plenty of people use Medium, but lots and lots still self-host.
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
> It’s not content distribution. Yeah, this is what I thought. RSS will give a URL to a sound file, which is hosted by someone, somewhere. It doesn’t sound like there’s anything inherent to podcasts -- not even RSS even though it’s so ubiquitous -- which prevents the content distribution to be more centralized. If a podcast recording is exclusively hosted by Spotify, that is where everyone gets that podcast; even if they got the URL for it elsewhere. It’s a bit like saying I get my articles from HN (disregarding that I don’t use RSS for it).
johnspurlock 3y ago
> But what is the source? Who is typically hosting these? Audio is easier to distribute than video, but aren’t most podcasts hosted on a handful of large services? Top Podcast Hosting Companies by Episode Share: https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/ https://livewire.io/podcast-hosts-by-episode-share/ Top Podcast CDNs by Episode Share: https://livewire.io/podcast-cdns-by-episode-share/ https://livewire.io/podcast-cdns-by-episode-share/

dist-epoch 3y ago

You are not representative. The vast majority of podcast listeners subscribe a channel on YouTube, Spotify or Apple. The vast majority of podcasts are served from similar centralized media companies. Which is why "JRE is moving from YouTube to Spotify for $200 mil" is a thing. If podcasts were decentralized you wouldn't "move" from one content company to another.

madeofpalk 3y ago
Which is why "Wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement.
- dist-epoch 3y ago
  99% of people read that as "Whichever you prefer from Spotify/YouTube/Apple"
skywhopper 3y ago
But you can get 99% of the same podcasts via Apple as you can via Spotify or many other podcasting apps. Just like you can visit websites on almost any web browser. This used to be how everything was expected to work online, but that has changed dramatically, and for the worse. (Spotify is trying to break the openness of podcasting but they mostly haven’t managed to do so, yet.)
jdauriemma 3y ago
Could you elaborate a bit further? I don’t see why this is necessarily true.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Someone is hosting the sound file that’s ultimately played when the podcast is listened to. A sibling comment to yours is saying that JRE is newly to be hosted with multiple hosts, which is the only real step away from centralization. RSS is just providing the means for an up-to-date URL for the podcast episodes. At the end of the day, the podcast is served by one of these hosts, regardless of how it was discovered. It can be observed that they’re centralized when media companies make exclusive deals as Spotify attempted with JRE.

hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago

I'd like a Really Simple Podcasts site where I can just log in with a username and a password, drag and drop an MP3 file from my computer, and have it get published as a new episode. Bliss.

zrail 3y ago
That's how most podcasting platforms work. For example, that's exactly how https://transistor.fm/ https://transistor.fm/ works. You make an account, upload an MP3, get an RSS feed.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  Yeah! This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you!

beeboobaa 3y ago

> Being able to look up almost any podcast in any podcast app and find its RSS feed and subscribe to it directly without requiring any intermediary is a huge thing in this era of proprietary silos. That's the point he's getting at. The sad part is this used to be completely normal. I remember browsing the web and most sites would show that little RSS icon in my browser indicating they have a feed available. But people are happy to let companies like apple run their lives for them and decide what they are allowed to consume, so now we have to act like this perfectly normal and reasonable thing is special. Yes, Siri. Thank you, Siri. May I watch another podcast, Siri?

Kye 3y ago
The RSS header is often still present. It's browsers that stopped supporting it.
- beeboobaa 3y ago
  Not really, I have a browser extension that still shows it. Super rare now, which isn't surprising, because like you say the browsers don't show it by default anymore.
  - Kye 3y ago
    Right. Browsers stopped supporting it. Defaults matter. You can add a plugin for any obscure thing.
    - beeboobaa 3y ago
      I'm not sure what your point is, but I think we're basically agreeing? RSS and decentralized hosting used to be normal until the bigcorps got greedy and started manipulating the masses (by removing features from browsers and such) into believing walled gardens are the only way.
      - colinsane 3y ago
        i think your point is that RSS used to be a norm on the consumption side, and is no longer; and GP's point is that it still is a norm on the publishing side, such that for the users who care -- like yourself -- the practical difference is not that large.