[HN Gopher] Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)
___________________________________________________________________
Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)
Author : dede4metal
Score : 357 points
Date : 2021-04-20 08:46 UTC (14 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (singhkays.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (singhkays.com)
| wenbin wrote:
| The open podcast system is growing strong:
| https://www.listennotes.com/podcast-stats/
|
| However, 50%+ of all rss-based podcasts are hosted on Anchor,
| which is owned by Spotify.
| rapnie wrote:
| 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/
|
| Submitted separately:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26882081
|
| (Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with the project)
| zild3d wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| prepend wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| prepend wrote:
| 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/referenc...
| input_sh wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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.
| lolive wrote:
| I searched for my favorite podcasts on Spotify. No result found.
|
| So as a first approach, for me, this is a fail.
| blfr wrote:
| What are you favourite podcasts?
| intpx wrote:
| 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.
| Zelphyr wrote:
| If what they have done to the Joe Rogan Experience is any
| indication, they will fail at this endeavor. How they have
| handled it is so bad that it can only be explained by
| incompetence.
|
| Over six months after switching to Spotify, when I venture back
| in to try to listen to an episode, it'll randomly stop playing
| for no apparent reason. It'll jump to another episode for no
| apparent reason. It'll pause playing and then resume anywhere
| from 5-30 seconds later. And why they insist on displaying
| total playing time as "mm:ss" instead of "hh:mm:ss" is beyond
| me.
| the_snooze wrote:
| >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.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > There's no privacy invasion
|
| Slight but worrying privacy invasion. Podcasts are
| increasingly inserting targeted ads based on download
| analytics. Just the other day, I was listening to a British
| podcast that advertised for a local company in Seattle, where
| my IP address tells them I'm from.
|
| The extent to which a podcast can target users has been
| somewhat limited until now. But if you use Spotify, they know
| what content you're listening to, and your exact listening
| behavior, as well as who you are. There's no doubt in my mind
| that they pay attention to that data internally, and very
| little doubt that they'll move to expose more and more of it
| to advertisers.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Plus you can always skip them with a couple of button
| presses.
| mertd wrote:
| I can see a future where podcasts move to a walled garden
| (Spotify) and the fast forward button gets disabled during
| ads.
| rurp wrote:
| To add to your point, the only time I've ever consciously
| bought something from an ad was through a podcast, and I've
| done it several times now.
| toyg wrote:
| Have you been listening to Harmontown or That Happens? The
| hosts literally do small improv bits for every ad.
| syshum wrote:
| I stopped listening to Rogan when he fell off my preferred
| PodCast app, and I am a Paying Spotify Premium user but I do
| not use Spotify for PodCasts because I like to keep my PodCasts
| and Music Separate
| BostonEnginerd wrote:
| I also resent being tracked especially when I am a paying
| customer.
| Covzire wrote:
| The strangest thing about Spotify for me is that I pay for
| Premium as well but that doesn't save me from Joe Rogan's own
| commercials he inserts into his spotify podcasts. They're
| skippable by simply moving the seek bar to the end but why if
| I'm paying for Premium are they even there? They're not baked
| into the podcast itself but rather the player pauses the
| playback of the podcast and cues up multiple 120(!) second
| ads.
|
| They're also a royal PITA to skip in my car because the
| spotify app on iPhone and PC are both awful but the mobile
| app is awful squared.
| blfr wrote:
| I have Spotify Premium and hear no ads on JRE.
| Covzire wrote:
| Well that's odd, I get hit by multiple (3-4) 60-120
| second ads about 2-3 times per podcast.
| dantheman wrote:
| It's still good to call out they are a bad actor in the podcast
| ecosystem. They can't compete on software, so they try to buy
| content and make it exclusive. There is no benefit to the user
| to their activities.
| apatters wrote:
| What Spotify is trying to do is called a roll-up. This is a
| well tread business tactic favored by aspiring monopolists and
| the strategy is simple: acquire most of the distribution in the
| space, then jack up the price. (In the podcast world,
| "distribution" equates to "listeners" and price equates to
| "Spotify's subscription and ad revenue.")
|
| The harm caused to both consumers and producers by a roll-up is
| well-documented. The legality is questionable but US regulators
| have been asleep on the job for decades.
|
| Fortunately Americans are starting to wake up.
|
| Matt Stoller did a piece on this last year:
| https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/will-spotify-ruin-podcast...
| valuearb wrote:
| That's not what a rollup is.
|
| A rollup is where you merge businesses doing functionally
| similar things, gaining economies of scale on costs. Its most
| often used for geographically distributed family businesses,
| such as Dentists. Dentists all need a lot of back office
| support, marketing, and sales functions. Having a rollup with
| a dozen Dental offices allows you to centralize all the
| insurance claim handling, direct marketing and put them under
| a single brand you can advertise on more mass market media.
|
| You are correct that where rollups are used in regulated
| industries that limit entrants such as radio, they lead to
| oligopolies. If you own most of the radio stations in a
| single city you not only get the rollup cost benefits, you
| can also increase your prices for advertising.
|
| But this is a direct effect of the market limitations that
| would occur either way, even if owners weren't allowed to
| reduce costs by buying stations in the same city to combine
| back office and operations, they would still do it to get
| oligarchic pricing power. And if you try to rollup most of
| the Dentist offices in a single city to raise prices you can
| only succeed temporarily, because it's a free market and your
| higher prices will attract lots of new entrants.
|
| Of course the other criticisms of rollups is they reduce
| diversity of offerings. In the case of radio it leads to
| homogenization of station playlists. Which is exactly what
| the BBC does in Britain, so I don't see the issue. Especially
| since radio is being gutted by the internet anyways.
| klelatti wrote:
| The key word here is "trying" - still open whether they will
| succeed.
|
| Agree that they should be stopped though, if it looks like
| they are succeeding.
| echelon wrote:
| So this is what Apple did with the app store.
|
| Applications used to be distributed everywhere, but Apple
| tightly controlled the platform and crippled the web browser.
| They even prevented Flash and other runtimes so they would be
| the only way to get native control on the device.
|
| They "rolled up" computing.
|
| What scummy behavior.
| valuearb wrote:
| Arguments that revolve on Flash being a benefit instead of
| the mobile power wasting security nightmare it actually
| was, always fail right there.
| rchaud wrote:
| Not exactly. Podcasts were openly available as
| downloadable, RSS-friendly MP3 files for a long time. Apple
| required iOS apps to be distributed through the app store.
| Before that, there were no iOS apps to speak of.
|
| Web pages are the iOS equivalent to open podcasts. iOS
| didn't stop those from working, although it did limit
| support for PWAs, which arrived years after the App Store.
| Even then, I can use apps like Uber without the App Store:
| m.uber.com.
|
| Not all companies will try to create a web experience
| that's 1:1 with the mobile app, but it's not something iOS
| prevents.
| dont__panic wrote:
| This is true, though I would argue that there is a
| difference between _creating_ a new platform where you have
| full control and trying to hostile takeover an existing
| open platform. On one hand you can at least give Apple
| credit that they 're trying to maintain some level of
| quality on the platform they created and expand their
| margins through software purchases (since the margins on
| hardware aren't _that_ high or flexible), whereas Spotify
| isn 't creating anything -- they're just trying to make a
| platform that already exists shittier.
| manigandham wrote:
| Interestingly Apple just launched paid subscriptions in Apple
| Podcasts: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-leads-the-
| next-...
| aylons wrote:
| RSS (Rich Site Summary)? Wasn't it Real Simple Syndication?
| danpalmer wrote:
| Yep. https://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification
| lobocinza wrote:
| 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.
| klelatti wrote:
| 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 $$$
| username_my1 wrote:
| Yeah I really wish there is a way to see the engagement with
| JRE on spotify ... on youtube it was immediately available
| (views count / comments / likes dislikes) ... in a sense
| youtube provided the end user with the content, a way to
| evaluate it (analytics) and ability to have a community around
| it (comment section).
|
| Spotify doesn't offer any of those.. I too was a daily JRE
| listener and not anymore, but the good news is that I feel like
| I upgraded by choosing more specialized podcasts based on my
| interests.
| kbenson wrote:
| Yeah, youtube was my preferred way to consume JRE. I'm not
| one to put on a podcast in the background, because I don't
| like having something I find interesting going on while I'm
| trying to do other stuff that requires thought, and if it's
| not interesting why would I put it on?
|
| Having the interesting moments distilled into two to three
| 10-15 minute clips was ideal, and if I found the conversation
| really interesting I might try to watch the whole show for
| that day.
|
| ... I was under the impression they had stopped doing that,
| but I just checked and there are a lot of clips showing on
| PowerfulJRE, so maybe they just screwed up their
| recommendation rating? I just know that when they went to
| spotify I stopped getting them recommended to me, but there's
| been a few the last couple weeks now.
| tootie wrote:
| I don't follow Joe Rogan or really very many podcasts, and the
| ones I do are fairly topical. I'm not going to go relisten to
| old episodes the same way I would rewatch The Office. It really
| shifts the focus to creators and away from the IP. I don't
| think that's really a set in stone thing though, it's just the
| nature of the type of audio content that's popular right now.
| redisman wrote:
| Rogan is fine (if dumb) light entertainment to have in the
| background. I haven't listened to a single episode since the
| move now that it's not on YouTube anymore. Spotify is also
| totally awful for podcasts as the UX is for a music player.
| Besides Lex now fills that hole with a lot more intelligence
| sol_invictus wrote:
| People also try to ignore that Spotify did exactly what
| everybody thought they would do - started watering down the
| guests and removing so-called controversial episodes.
|
| A big part of the Rogan show charm was the fringe guests, and
| his audience doesnt care the least for the kind of corporate
| virtue signalling Spotify is eminating.
|
| In effect, it went from offering somewhat novel things to
| being plain boring - like everything else you'd expect from a
| Spotify podcast. I dont find Rogan particularly charismatic
| as a host either so why listen anymore?
| crocodiletears wrote:
| Exactly this. Rogan didn't always have something or
| somebody interesting on the podcast. But his show had
| teeth, and even though it didn't go out of its way to bare
| them, you knew they were there.
|
| I didn't follow him to Spotify. Podcasting is a bastion of
| free-speech, and one of the few open ecosystems with real
| scale. I don't resent him taking the deal, but losing the
| show wasn't enough to tempt me into a gilded cage.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Eh, Rogan normalizes hate speech in ways that if you or I
| were to try to do would get us fired/unfriended.
|
| I don't think that's "fine", but it's also not really topical
| to the submission so I'll leave it at that.
|
| Edit: if folks want to start a discussion about this with me,
| let's create an email thread about it. My email is in my
| profile, I'll wait until three folks mention their interest
| before getting started, if that works. I really didn't mean
| to upset or try to dodge anything, I just don't think a
| protracted discussion about Joe Rogan will be very
| interesting to most people on HN.
| will4274 wrote:
| Can you give me an example of something Joe Rogan has said
| that you think a tech employer would fire an employee for?
| (Seriously asking, I don't listen to Rogan.)
| claaams wrote:
| He's elevated and normalized white ethno-fascist voices.
| He is subtly transphobic. I used to listen to him
| constantly when I was younger but I find him to be a huge
| chungus these days. I think maybe its that I have changed
| more than his podcast has but I'm not sure.
| will4274 wrote:
| I meant like, a quote. or an episode. Some raw data I can
| listen to, not just your conclusion.
| watwut wrote:
| IMO, what you ask for is too much effort for caususal
| discussion on HN. If you want that, you have to listen
| for yourself.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sounds more like you want to raise the subject but don't
| want anyone to challenge you on it so you'll "leave it at
| that."
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I'm sorry, hit me up on my email in my profile if you
| want to discuss more! A "Is Joe Rogan a racist?"
| conversation is not interesting, and this place is about
| hosting interesting discussions.
| cbozeman wrote:
| > A "Is Joe Rogan a racist?" conversation is not
| interesting, and this place is about hosting interesting
| discussions.
|
| Yeah... because it's a bullshit conversation that people
| know is false, and any attempt to try to argue otherwise
| would see you utterly destroyed with facts.
|
| Rogan and Chappelle are great friends. Rogan was friends
| with Patrice O'Neal. He's friends with Colion Noir and
| has him on the show about every six - twelve months.
|
| For a "racist", he's doing a pretty poor job.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Man, I'd love to discuss this with you, but I really
| don't think it makes for good HN content. Unlike most, I
| do enjoy getting "destroyed with facts". Please email me!
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I've heard Joe Rogan jokingly refered to as "Oprah for middle
| aged white dudes".
| valarauko wrote:
| Sounds like something Merlin Mann might say on "Do By
| Friday"
| qwaters wrote:
| Rogan conducted decent interviews with Roger Penrose and
| Oliver Stone.
|
| It's not about Rogan, it is about the guests. His
| interviews are certainly less formulaic than Charlie
| Rose's, except when he inserts his favorite topics (just
| use fast forward ...).
| rodgerd wrote:
| If only he were Oprah.
|
| More like "Gwyneth Paltrow for bros".
| 40four wrote:
| Except Gwyneth and friends are emulating Rogan's 'model'
| and applying it to the female audience. Rogan and his
| style of broadcasting were around for almost a decade
| before Goop decided to start podcasting & make a TV show.
| Pretty smart on their part honestly. When I saw the
| Netflix show, all I could think of is 'This is JRE for
| women'. Even using some of the same guests, and topics
| Joe had already popularized.
| rtsil wrote:
| Painfully accurate.
| rchaud wrote:
| 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.
| kbenson wrote:
| I have a few I've considered indispensable that have shifted
| over time. Reply All is consistently good (but I'm a couple
| months behind at this point, less podcast time). Dan Carlin's
| Hardcore History is a treat when it comes out, but that's
| like every 4-6 months usually. This is only a test from
| tested.com is good, and even though it's weekly it's topical
| enough I can skip a week or two and not feel like I need to
| go back and listen. My most recent favorite is Brad & Will
| Made a Tech Pod, which perfectly encapsulates that feeling I
| used to get when I sat down with a good friend and we started
| talking about/ranting about some interesting thing one of us
| did a deep dive on recently.
|
| Not that you actually asked. ;)
| fargo wrote:
| spoiler alert: reply all is unfortunately dead
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| The Intelligence is available as a regular old podcast feed
| too - all Economist podcasts are.
| ThisIsTheWay wrote:
| I'll admit I'm a podcast novice, but what player are you using
| and what does it offer beyond Spotify? I find, download, and
| play podcasts through Spotify without issues, and the few
| features I need (speed adjustment, offline access, and show
| notes/links) are all available on Spotify.
|
| If there is a better way to listen, I'd love to hear about it.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Castro on iOS. It uses an inbox triage model that lets me
| subscribe to a lot of podcasts and keep up with what they're
| doing, without cluttering my queue or inducing decision
| fatigue. It has more granular (per-podcast) controls for
| smart speed, silence skipping, voice leveling, skipping
| intros and automatic triage than Spotify. It also lets me
| upload custom audio and subscribe to custom/private feeds.
| Support for scripting listening and feed management with iOS
| shortcuts is above a useful threshold.
|
| Prior to Castro, I used Overcast and Pocket Casts, which have
| similar features.
|
| I'm sure Spotify is the future but these third party clients
| are great for heavy listeners who want more control.
| klelatti wrote:
| I use PocketCasts (on iOS) and I'm happy enough to pay for a
| subscription (extra benefits are marginal though).
|
| It's less about features, I think, and more about the overall
| experience. It's probably quite personal too, but in no
| particular order:
|
| - Smoother and more responsive UI
|
| - Less cluttered and more dense UI eg visual overview of all
| my subscriptions
|
| - Silence trimming
|
| - Sharing from a given place in a podcast
|
| I do use Spotify for music though so I'm not completely anti
| the Spotify experience. In fairness to the Spotify designers
| I do think that they have a more difficult job in integrating
| podcasts into an app that is mainly a music player.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| I use it on Android and also quite happy with it after
| years of use.
| mey wrote:
| Another user of PocketCasts (Android and Windows).
|
| In addition to the above, I make use of
|
| - podcast specific auto download, retention, and playback
| settings
|
| - clean Android Auto integration. When I switch from
| Pandora to PocketCasts, it's quite clear what is happening.
| It intelligently handles pausing/resuming playback while
| notifications are playing. Even rewinding a little if it's
| been a bit since you listened.
|
| - Progress sync, so I can pickup where I was on different
| versions of the app. (Desktop/Web/Android)
|
| - Fast refresh of feeds. Your phone asks their server for
| the status rather than calling each server individually.
| This was a bigger issue back in the day.
| resfirestar wrote:
| Spotify still doesn't allow the user to add an RSS feed in
| the app, right? Until they support that it makes no sense to
| use as my main podcast app because the (admittedly few)
| podcasts I listen to are mostly either too behind the times
| to be on Spotify or I pay for their Patreon and need to be
| able to use the subscriber feed. I use AntennaPod on Android
| and the built-in Podcasts app on iOS.
| digikata wrote:
| I've been using iCatcher on ios for years now. It has all the
| things you mention but also a nice set of sorting logic to
| choose from as well as other per-podcast options like
| prioritization and number of episodes to download/display
| etc.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I use Pocket Casts. I just like it a lot, and I don't want to
| switch because it does everything I need. Spotify seems like
| it wouldn't be as configurable, but I haven't even felt the
| need to check.
|
| Plus, I don't like a monoculture.
| tmh88j wrote:
| >I just like it a lot, and I don't want to switch because
| it does everything I need. Spotify seems like it wouldn't
| be as configurable
|
| Maybe I'm missing out on part of the experience. What else
| is there to do with a podcast other than download/stream
| and listen?
|
| - Thanks for all the tips. I don't listen to a ton of
| podcasts but I'll give it a shot.
| Hiopl wrote:
| Favoriting episodes, bookmarks, auto-queues, prioritizing
| podcasts, downloading episodes for archival purposes,
| playback history, list of all episodes in progress,
| stripping empty audio, crazy amount of configurability,
| and an interface that isn't terrible. I'm sure there are
| a bunch of other features I'm forgetting.
|
| I've tried Spotify. It's not a podcast player. It's an
| audio player with none of the conveniences of a modern
| podcast player. If all you want to do is listen to
| podcasts, I'm sure it's fine, but it's not in any way
| sufficient for my needs. At this point, Podcast Addict is
| the only app out there that I can stand to use.
| ahelwer wrote:
| You're not missing out on anything. The Pocket Casts UI
| is impenetrable and I can never remember how to tell
| which podcasts are downloaded, which I've listened to,
| etc. There's some overlap with the "archive" feature that
| is unintuitive.
| zomgwat wrote:
| Chapter support is a nice feature when it's available.
| There are some podcasts that I listen to straight
| through. I skip around others.
| atoombs wrote:
| Not the parent commenter, but there's a lot of features I
| like out of Pocket Casts that Spotify doesn't do as well.
|
| - Queuing/auto-queuing to a next-up playlist (with
| features like add to start or add to end)
|
| - Faster playback (e.g. listening at 2x speed)
|
| - Alerts when new episodes drop to a given feed
|
| It's very configurable and works well.
|
| Also, I just dislike having to abandon my music queue
| when I listen to a podcast on Spotify. It's nice to have
| music playing at home, pause it, go for a walk listening
| to a podcast, finish the walk, then resume the same
| song/playlist at home.
| tapland wrote:
| Well, why are we not coding on laptops from 1994?
|
| The user interface can be wildly different.
|
| Pocket casts changed recently but oh how I lived the old
| ui. Spotify had nothing on it.
|
| Haven't had a reason to download Spotify since even
| though I haven't liked all the changes in the new pocket
| casts.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I believe (though I'm not sure) that AntennaPod is closer
| to the old Pocket Casts UI (but not as polished):
|
| https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/
| tmh88j wrote:
| Your snarky response isn't helpful. You've only said
| "it's different" and dismissed Spotify while also not
| giving any reasons why you dislike it.
| StavrosK wrote:
| Playback speed, how many episodes to download on each
| podcast (some I listen to often, some rarely), what do
| with them when done, when to go to the next episode
| automatically, there's a lot. And I want these
| configurable per-podcast.
| boardwaalk wrote:
| Some apps also have the ability to compress silent gaps
| in audio which can save a lot of time over time. It may
| not work if you're listening to things that need 'comedic
| timing' but otherwise it's entirely seamless.
|
| I've been using Apple's app recently and its the one
| thing I quite miss.
| rodiger wrote:
| Also configurable speed controls + skipping whitespace +
| easier to skip ads (Spotify podcasts break out the ads
| into their own streams so you can't skip them all in one
| go, though you can skip them individually).
| Cd00d wrote:
| Don't know about the competition, but PocketCasts has a
| lot of options in the share feature I use. Share podcast,
| share episode, share episode _at this point_. I 'll often
| times send a share text saying "listen to the next 3
| minutes".
| klondike_klive wrote:
| I tweeted at the Pocketcasts team to recommend adding a
| feature that I would find useful (I think it was
| excluding "the" from alphabetised list of podcasts since
| it made titles clump together under "T"). They responded
| quickly and implemented it pretty soon afterwards. I was
| impressed.
|
| I love the web player interface (although have found
| problems using a VPN) but the Android app has been a bit
| tricky to use, having to navigate to filters to find
| episodes I've downloaded.
| divslinger wrote:
| Other nice features I haven't seen mentioned
|
| - sort by most liked - save clips
| truth_ wrote:
| I use Podbean coupled with Pocket Casts. They do everything
| I need. These apps are really useful.
|
| Also, there are only so many things that you expect from a
| Podcast app-
|
| - Does not have ads. (Some banner ads are okay) - Offers
| download in external storage - Has bookmarking capabilities
| - Offers all the titles I listen to - Saves data associated
| with an email address
|
| There. Simple. Don't want anything more.
| dont__panic wrote:
| I would love to support Pocket Casts, but I don't want to
| pay another subscription (Pocket Casts plus appears to be
| $1/mo). Do you know if there's any way to just pay $12 for
| Plus forever or something like that? Or another podcast app
| that has that kind of one-time purchase?
| kbenson wrote:
| Is there a feature you want out of the paid subscription,
| or do you just want to support them? The subscription
| goes towards enabling features which have an ongoing cost
| (sync of files and listening state across devices so you
| can listen on desktop where you left off on mobile). I
| don't think they want to offer a one time fee for what is
| an indefinite period of cost.
|
| AFAIK most features other than that are still fully
| supported in the free version of the app without ads
| though. So if you don't want any of those features,
| they're probably better supported by you recommending
| them to others than giving them a few dollars.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Yeah, I mostly just wanted to toss them a few bucks since
| they've created an app that I really love. That's a good
| point, though -- I've recommended Pocket Casts to a lot
| of folks at this point, and pushed several off of
| listening to podcasts on Spotify so I'm doing my part to
| contribute in small ways.
| kossae wrote:
| I use Overcast (https://overcast.fm/) which I believe has
| a one-time purchase fee to remove ads. It also has pretty
| nice features such as audio boost and silence trimming.
| ryanwhitney wrote:
| Overcast. It has a "smart speed" feature that cuts out breaks
| and pauses in a way that's almost unnoticeable but will
| save/gain you hundreds of hours. And audio clip sharing and
| great leveling in addition to privacy features.
|
| https://overcast.fm/
|
| There's numerous small developers out there putting in much
| more care than Spotify.
| michaelbuckbee wrote:
| Also a huge fan of Overcast. I just looked and it's saved
| me an extra "211 hours beyond speed adjustments alone".
| jollybean wrote:
| 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]
| mikece wrote:
| 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
| brandonmenc wrote:
| I also like his "value for value" model:
|
| https://www.entrepreneurability.nl/2020/12/04/the-emergence-...
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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.
| Lendal wrote:
| No, but they could lose subscribers due to Podcasts.
|
| See, I pay for Spotify because of their playlists. Playlists
| have nothing to do with podcasts. I listen to my podcasts using
| a different app. Yet Spotify keeps throwing its podcasts in my
| face. Spotify is not good at podcasts. That's why I use a
| different app for that. I'm getting tired of scrolling past all
| the podcast spam in my Spotify UI, and yet Spotify provides NO
| option in Settings to turn OFF their podcast
| advertisements/recommendations. That is annoying to me, a
| paying customer. So they're pushing this, and annoying me, at
| their own peril.
| iscrewyou wrote:
| Lately, I've even been scared of listening to music other
| than my usual taste (e.g. a radio hit, a foreign song, song
| in one of those instagram videos) because their algorithm
| seems to amplify my "smart" playlists with anything that's
| different.
|
| There should be an option to turn off simple things like
| that: turn off podcasts, pause learning from my music for
| then next 30 minutes, etc.
|
| I always thought the advantage of standalone apps like
| Spotify(updated anytime) vs something like Apple
| Music(updated on big iOS releases) is that they can iterate
| faster. But seems like they are throwing more eggs in content
| creation basket than UX.
| hellohiyesokay wrote:
| Private sessions are my solution for branching out. Still a
| pain, and shouldn't happen. Google Play Music did this
| really well and for me, even with its issues, was miles
| ahead of Spotify.
| mackrevinack wrote:
| i instinctively turn on private mode every time i open
| spotify on my desktop. i really wish it worked the
| opposite way, have it turned off all the time and then
| turn it on when you want spotify to build up new
| recommendations for you
| aerospace_guy wrote:
| > There should be an option to turn off simple things like
| that: turn off podcasts, pause learning from my music for
| then next 30 minutes, etc.
|
| They state that private listening 'may' not influence your
| music recommendations.
|
| https://support.spotify.com/us/article/private-listening/
| tshaddox wrote:
| I recently gave Spotify a try for about 8 months but just
| switched back to Apple Music. My reason for switching back
| had nothing to do with podcasts, it was simply Spotify's
| terrible interface that makes it impossible to _just browse
| all the music in your library_. But I had also started to
| notice podcasts infiltrating UI that used to be only music
| playlists. A few times I even mistakenly clicked on a podcast
| thinking that it was a music playlist that sounded
| interesting.
| fastball wrote:
| I pay for both, and I honestly can't get over how Apple
| Music feels more sluggish on my Apple computer than Spotify
| does. It's like night and day.
| neves wrote:
| It's even worse if you want to hear your mp3 collection.
| Terrible interface.
| NopeNotToday wrote:
| I dont think Spotify cares about the 0.1% of users that
| bring their own MP3s. It's a shrinking market. The growth
| is all the people who never even heard of an EmPeaThree.
|
| I think back when I ripped my 350+ CDs to FLAC. In
| retrospect, it wasn't worth it.
| yakkers wrote:
| I wouldn't bring in an entire library, but one big thing
| I find Apple Music has over Spotify is how well your
| traditional library and the Apple Music library converge.
|
| I make use of it a lot for albums and songs not available
| on Apple Music. AFAIK, Spotify doesn't really have an
| answer to this.
| atat7024 wrote:
| Nah, should have kept a What.CD acct or its successors.
| SSLy wrote:
| Well, redacted isn't impossible to get into.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I didn't even try to upload my own songs. I just want to
| add stuff to my library and then be able to browse
| everything in my library by artist and album. On the
| iPhone app, this is impossible, which is absolutely
| baffling.
| aeon97 wrote:
| The only way to get around this is to make playlists that
| are just different albums, which is what I do. Not a
| great system, and I think it has actually changed the way
| I listen to music for the worse
| wingworks wrote:
| Yep I can't stand spotify's UI either, so cumbersome.
| [deleted]
| Sphax wrote:
| I did just that about a month ago. I don't give a shit about
| their podcasts, I'm only interested in their music, the home
| screen is garbage now. I moved to Qobuz (which has other
| problems, but it's generally fine).
| amatecha wrote:
| Yup, I've been noticing that. Indeed, I've been preparing to
| cancel my subscription (backing up my "library"/playlists
| externally etc.), and their push into podcasts (and pushing
| them on me) is one of the reasons.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I feel same way! Also paying, also using other app, because
| spotify podcasting misses the features I want.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Can you tell me how Spotify is with playlists of comedy
| albums?
|
| I started falling asleep to comedy a couple months ago to
| manage poor sleep based on a generally negative attitude. It
| was fine on YT Music for a while, but now a lot of the
| community playlists are garbage, or most of the clips have
| been pulled (I assume some copyright issues).
|
| I'd move to Spotify for that, and pay, if they had a catalog
| of decent standup comedy.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Do you find a significant difference between that and
| comedy podcasts?
| blastro wrote:
| it's been a while, but I remember Pandora having pretty
| good comendy stations. good luck!
| pnutjam wrote:
| I really liked Pandora for comedy. Spotify has lots of
| comedy albums, but the interface is not as easy to
| navigate.
| loosetypes wrote:
| Audible has been doing similarly recently and it's quite
| frustrating.
|
| I understand everyone's doing it and you as a company feel
| entitled to a slice of whatever podcast pie.
|
| What I don't understand is how that can take focus when your
| audio player has been getting steadily worse - corrupted
| offline download, buggy buffering, choppy audio after jumping
| back 30s.
|
| If your bread and butter - what I'm actually paying for -
| doesn't work I'll gladly save a few bucks and go to the
| public library.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Amazon Music has also started the same, even putting a
| banner ad for Amazon Music Podcasts in the Amazon app.
| cgriswald wrote:
| They could lose them in the other direction as well. Unlike
| you, I don't mind podcasts being thrown at me. However,
| having come to enjoy a couple of the podcasts on offer, I'm
| not offered a way to subscribe to the pay versions of those
| podcasts, so I end up subscribing directly. Unfortunately,
| the Spotify app doesn't provide me a way to add my private
| RSS feeds from those subscriptions, so I spend much less time
| on Spotify and question whether I need the service at all.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I doubt if spotify will ever add RSS capabilities.
| emayljames wrote:
| That is why I use YT Music. Podcasts are in a different
| Google realm (Google podcasts), and get no podspaming. I also
| find spotify too in your face in general, like an over eager
| salesman.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| Not very related... The reason I canceled Spotify Account is
| because I couldn't downvote songs in a playlist. The music
| suggestions for some artists were horrible, and I couldn't
| opt out of them.
| tachyonbeam wrote:
| What's losing my interest more and more is that their music
| recommendations are terrible, rarely match my taste... And,
| uh, I wish there was an easier way for me to just browse
| music by category. I just want to see all the new releases
| under electronic music and browse through them quickly. I
| don't need to be spoon-fed things as part of "discover
| weekly".
|
| Also, the Spotify Chromecast integration is utter shit. It
| has been utter shit for a while, but it seems it's just
| getting worse? It's laggy, it randomly pauses during my
| playlist for no reason. I ended up buying a bluetooth
| receiver to hook to my AV system so I could get reliable
| playback. What the fuck? Why isn't this getting fixed?
| claudiulodro wrote:
| The Every Noise at Once guy also has a project where it's
| a raw weekly dump of all the new Spotify releases sorted
| by categories: https://everynoise.com/new_releases_by_gen
| re.cgi?genre=edm&r...
|
| That's what I use to get more in-depth than the tiny
| amount of new releases Spotify features in its official
| playlists.
| emayljames wrote:
| YT Music has it all, categories, easy library listening,
| no podspaming, Chromecast. Spotify is like a salesman who
| has been drinking too much coffee.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| For some reason, YouTube Music still puts music I've
| downvoted in the playlists it makes for me.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| > What's losing my interest more and more is that their
| music recommendations are terrible, rarely match my
| taste...
|
| I found a lot of the release radar and other
| recommendations are spot on and I end up liking a lot of
| the songs it suggests.
| nitrogen wrote:
| _What 's losing my interest more and more is that their
| music recommendations are terrible, rarely match my
| taste..._
|
| The really aggravating thing is that we know they have
| the tech to do better. There was that demo of a 2D
| embedding of genre-space that actually did a pretty
| decent job of grouping similar-sounding songs together,
| but their recommendations all seem to be based off of
| what was popular at the same time, or what came from the
| same label.
|
| E.g. when I ask for recommendations for a song like
| "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness," I should get
| "Avril 14th," not "Bullet with Butterfly Wings."
| zouhair wrote:
| Spotify is also not good as a music player. You have no real
| control.
| tootie wrote:
| They don't really need to. In fact, some early industry rumors
| say that are not close to recouping costs. They're instead
| doing the classic SV play of selling customers a dollar for 50
| cents until they are addicted and then pulling the rug. They
| want to cripple the open market by firehosing cash until
| everyone else gives up, then they can do what they want.
|
| Apple and Google are playing this game too in their own ways.
| Google is going to try to make podcasting more like youtube in
| the next few years.
| christopherwxyz wrote:
| Any fixed cost business will inherently have large sunk costs
| and will not experience net profits until you've worked your
| way down the cost curve. Content businesses have marginal
| costs that approach zero as a function of time -- of course
| without any operating cost of delivery. There's no need for
| "early industry rumors" to understand the fixed cost business
| of streaming.
|
| "The Office" was paid for in full, distributed in a first-
| party network, then syndicated, then digitally licensed, and
| now back to its first-party network. The total revenue value
| of that decade long investment is not the same as a variable
| cost businesses like ecommerce, delivery services, or
| Moviepass.
| ravi-delia wrote:
| I mean, the point still kinda stands. Spotify can throw money
| at podcasting until the cows go home, but if they aren't
| buying something for their money it's just going to waste.
| Podcasts on Spotify aren't all that good, and every podcast I
| (and everyone I know) actually listen to is accessible
| elsewhere.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It probably depends on the market. In Germany a very famous
| podcast by TV host Jan Bohmermann
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_B%C3%B6hmermann is only
| available via spotify. That certainly impacts people. Maybe not
| for being the sole reason for being Spotify users, but relevant
| attention.
|
| Other communities certainly have their relevant content.
| neves wrote:
| Wait till they start to control a significant part of public
| discourse. They will receive money to recommend some podcast,
| and bury others. The young Facebook was a great place to
| advertise your business. Now you have to pay for it.
| coliveira wrote:
| I guess Spotify is paying "celebrities" to host their podcasts,
| even at a loss, as a way to get more people to subscribe. It is
| a well known game that was played by satellite radio stations a
| decade ago.
| mvolfik wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| klelatti wrote:
| Happy to be corrected on this but does a minute spent on
| Spotify listening to a podcast (that they haven't paid for) vs
| listening to music reduce their costs?
|
| If so then it would make sense to establish themselves as a
| podcast player - with their users listening to podcasts through
| their app - even if they don't sell any extra subs and that
| alone might justify the up-front investment.
| brownindian wrote:
| Well, an important reason for spotify to have podcasts is $$.
| Unlike music producers, Podcasters are not paid by play count.
| The ones from openweb are not paid at all by Spotify, I am not
| sure about the ones that have deals with Spotify directly, like
| Joe Rogan. Anyway, the more time users spend listening to
| podcasts, the less they have to pay to music producers. which
| means more EBITDA! And my friend, its all about EBITDA.
| jorvi wrote:
| Spotify's reason for getting people on podcasts is not only
| lock-in, every hour you listen to a podcast is an hour they
| don't have to pay music royalties for.
| root_axis wrote:
| Spotify is targeting the millions of customers that already use
| their app who aren't regular podcast listeners. These people
| will now get exposed to the podcast ecosystem through Spotify
| and that'll help boost subscriber retention.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| As someone who uses Spotify for music, and another podcast
| app for podcasts, I find it annoying to scroll past podcasts
| to get to music. I'm skeptical that someone who has no
| interest in podcasts will decide that instead of putting on
| music they want to listen to a podcast - at least in most
| situations.
| root_axis wrote:
| Spotify has 350m users, even if it's not in "most cases"
| there is huge potential to tap into.
| atupis wrote:
| I think cars are reason. Spotify wants in cars. Daniel Ek has
| said this thing like many times now. If Spotify can corner
| podcast market then car companies has to do deals with Spotify
| and they cannot just use custom build apps or some other
| competitors.
| e40 wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Every time I hear that (and I want to check it out), I do so in
| Pocket Casts, my fav app (first on Android, then on iOS). I
| know there are probably podcasts that are _only_ on Spotify,
| but I haven't tripped over one yet.
| andrepd wrote:
| OT but AntennaPod is amazing, and open source. I switched
| from Pocket Casts and it's amazing.
| Causality1 wrote:
| Podcast Addict is my favorite. Being able to keep different
| settings for every podcast is nice.
| kevincox wrote:
| AntennaPod is unfortunately quite lacking if you like to
| listen to "story" podcasts where you want to listen old ->
| new.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| I've been a latecomer to the 'history of *' podcast
| genre. Recently been working through Revolutions.
| Antennapod lets you sort a podcast's episodes
| chronologically, reverse-chronologically, alphabetically,
| etc.
| kevincox wrote:
| Yes but the auto-download feature doesn't work.
| crocodiletears wrote:
| You may be right on that, I have it disabled so I haven't
| noticed.
| marc__1 wrote:
| Will offer some data points from Spotify's Investor Relations
| [1] that add some additional color to the anecdotes from
| previous comments:
|
| - Total MAUs grew 27% Y/Y to 345 million in the quarter (...)
| Based on the behavior we see when users first join Spotify, we
| are confident that _podcast_ usage has been a factor in the
| accelerated net additions.
|
| - The strength in Ad-Supported revenue was led by our _Podcast_
| , Direct, and Ad Studio channels, with Podcast and Ad Studio
| both growing over 100% on a Y/Y basis. _Podcast_ performance
| benefited from strong underlying demand from advertisers with a
| 50% increase in the number of companies spending in this
| channel vs. Q3
|
| - As of Q4, we had 2.2 million podcasts on the platform (up
| from more than 1.9 million podcasts in Q3). Of note, 25% of our
| Total MAUs engaged with podcast content in Q4 (up from 22% of
| MAUs in Q3 2020
|
| So the short answer is that podcasts help increase usage of the
| platform (and with better margins than music, probably due to
| copyright and leverage of artists vs. content creators)
|
| [1] https://investors.spotify.com/financials/default.aspx
| cosmodisk wrote:
| 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.
| nwsm wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Why would you not put it on Spotify? It costs you nothing and
| can only increase your audience. I'm not talking about
| exclusive-rights scenarios, but the majority of podcasts which
| are published to multiple platforms.
| IceHegel wrote:
| 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.
| brandonmenc wrote:
| 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.
| rchaud wrote:
| > 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.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/broa
| dcasting.d...
| gsich wrote:
| Podcasts without RSS are not podcasts.
| JI00912 wrote:
| Points for getting Joe rogan: +50
|
| Points for censorship: -1000
|
| Spotify is not taking over.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Aside from Joe Rogan (who's gone a bit barmy) I have no problem
| getting rss feeds for everything I want...
| pixxel wrote:
| Barmy? I've not listened since his move to Spotify. What's
| happened?
| tpmx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I see. Perhaps COVID has impacted quality guests from
| travelling, and poorer quality guests are more willing to
| travel. Just a guess.
| tpmx wrote:
| Yeah, seems like it.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| 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...
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| 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.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| 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.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It was open until people realized that they could make
| significant money off of it. Then the walls started going up.
| cerved wrote:
| It was open until people realized they couldn't make any
| significant money off it that way
| nxpnsv wrote:
| 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.
| armoredkitten wrote:
| 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.
| post_break wrote:
| 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.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Announced: https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/20/apple-unveils-
| podcast-subs...
|
| Press Release: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2021/04/apple-
| leads-the-next-...
|
| Quote:
|
| >Starting in May, listeners in more than 170 countries and
| regions can sign up for premium subscriptions that include a
| variety of benefits curated by creators, such as ad-free
| listening, access to additional content, and early or exclusive
| access to new series.
|
| >Fifteen years ago, Apple took podcasts mainstream, offering
| creators a premier, _open platform_ to inform, entertain, and
| inspire hundreds of millions of listeners around the world,"
| said Eddy Cue
|
| Interesting that the "open platform" part is no longer needed.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Well its not really. There are a lot of places to get
| podcasts from now, but there wasn't then.
| post_break wrote:
| So now Apple gets 15-30% of the payment to podcasters? Pass
| raiyu wrote:
| 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.
| slg wrote:
| >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.
| post_break wrote:
| 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.
| MentallyRetired wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Media has never been FOSS. Radio stations do not play artists
| by random lottery, they play whoever paid up to get played.
| adamrezich wrote:
| > How do the champions of FOSS battle this?
|
| "Podcasting 2.0" https://podcastindex.org/
| coldacid wrote:
| 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
| raverbashing wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| alangibson wrote:
| 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.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Wonder how the removal and censorship of podcasts will affect
| content makers:
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/joe-rogan-experience-podcast...
| xnyan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| GNU_James wrote:
| And? I don't use spotify and you shouldn't use that proprietary
| crap either.
| SeanFerree wrote:
| I'm not a fan of Spotify. It seems that greed has taken them over
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| 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.
| nmz wrote:
| Embrace and extinguish.
| hnburnsy wrote:
| JRE RSS for any podcast player...
|
| https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/4rOoJ6Egrf8K2IrywzwOMk
|
| Many thanks to Tim Dorr for creating this, works for any Spotify
| podcast...
|
| https://spotifeed.timdorr.com/
| messo wrote:
| 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.
| dont__panic wrote:
| 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.
| asimovfan wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jmfldn wrote:
| 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.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| 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.
| pixxel wrote:
| >I liked JRE, but even as a Spotify user, I don't listen to him
| anymore.
|
| Same. I don't know why that is though. Perhaps because he sold
| out open podcasting? Especially as he has had Adam Curry on a
| couple of times. But then I defy anyone to turn down such a
| payday (I wouldn't).
|
| Perhaps it's the abandoning of a very large community (YT
| comments). That doesn't affect me personally but I know it
| affects others.
|
| A subconscious sour taste somewhat?
| function_seven wrote:
| Couple reasons for me:
|
| Mainly, when I'm looking for something to listen to, I go to
| my podcast app. There's a list of latest episodes. I browse
| and pick one. JRE never appears on that list, so out of
| sight, out of mind.
|
| But also, his show has taken a nosedive in quality in the
| last 6 months. Feels like discussions are always (a) COVID
| mask rules are dumb (or maybe they're not?, depends on the
| guest), (b) The Comedy Cellar was hella tight back in the
| day, (c) Texas is awesome, California is basically a
| dystopian hellhole.
|
| None of those points bother me that much. Whatever. But when
| they're recycled ad nauseam on every episode, it's just
| boring.
|
| So now I just don't bother. I have the Spotify app. But it's
| not something I think about for podcasting.
| pixxel wrote:
| > There's a list of latest episodes. I browse and pick one.
| JRE never appears on that list, so out of sight, out of
| mind.
|
| That's a good point.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Wonder if the pandemic, combined with moving to another
| state, has impacted his ability to find new guests or
| guests with new stories to tell. IIRC, he has lots of
| hunters on his show, right? But if the world is more or
| less locked down, those hunters aren't going off to
| interesting places and coming back with stories to tell.
| Same for any other activity that requires travel. The
| fallback are the types of shows you mentioned. And being in
| a new state means creating a new network of contacts, which
| will take time and is slowed by the pandemic regardless of
| how loose Texas might be in their restrictions.
| rchaud wrote:
| How about montonony and repetition?
|
| There are > 1000 episodes of JRE, each 1-3 hours long. An
| enormous amount of repetition results from this. I have
| watched less than 50 episodes and I know I have to FFWD when
| Rogan starts talking about divorce laws in California, using
| the same example of one unnamed friend who lost everything to
| his ex-wife.
|
| Podcasts with other comedians are unlistenable due to the
| constant navel-gazing about The Comedy Store and cancel
| culture.
| function_seven wrote:
| > _Podcasts with other comedians are unlistenable due to
| the constant navel-gazing about The Comedy Store and cancel
| culture._
|
| Yup. One notable exception to this is Bill Burr. I'll
| listen to any of those because Bill doesn't put up with it.
| rchaud wrote:
| Yes, I have noticed that as well. But Bill Burr is a
| significantly higher profile guest than the usual
| comedians whose careers revolve around the LA/Southern
| Calif area.
| pixxel wrote:
| > How about montonony and repetition?
|
| Fair point. Although I would add that recording thousands
| of hours of your own conversations would result in much
| monotony and repetition.
| romanhn wrote:
| 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.
| dna_polymerase wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| falcolas wrote:
| 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.
| towb wrote:
| >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...
| joshlemer wrote:
| > Joe is getting less likeable lately...
|
| Agreed - he always had a noticeable tilt on issues but lately
| it seems to be all about scoring sick dunks on SJW's. I was
| also surprised how little prep he apparently does before
| podcasts. During the latest Elon Musk episode he learned on-
| air that the reusable rockets land propulsively (as opposed
| to using parachutes or otherwise). It's odd to have possibly
| the richest man in the world on for 3 multi-hour podcasts and
| not know the most basic facts about their accomplishments.
| towb wrote:
| Haha yes! How could he not have seen the ring of fire video
| and still be Elons number one fan???
|
| Could we confirm parallel universes now? Because the one
| Joe lives in is different. Think he lost touch. Also
| noticed him being more of a dick lately, the "I'm a nice
| person"-Joe is off in yet another universe doing something
| else...
| qudat wrote:
| > I liked JRE, but even as a Spotify user, I don't listen to
| him anymore.
|
| I'm not a spotify user and I will not move over to it for JRE.
|
| I'm more of a youtube user who found JRE interesting when it
| was on that platform.
| blfr wrote:
| But that's just Google controlling your content rather than
| Spotify. Not really open either way.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| 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.
| mouldysammich wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| somehnguy wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| frankzander wrote:
| This is a serious topic IMHO
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