[HN Gopher] The Podcast Index
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The Podcast Index
Author : logn
Score : 65 points
Date : 2024-09-11 14:02 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (podcastindex.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (podcastindex.org)
| karaterobot wrote:
| 4 million podcasts. That's an order of magnitude more than I'd
| have guessed. A quick search shows other sources estimating 5
| million.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, I'm guessing I have two podcasts in there, one of which
| is completely inactive and the other of which I haven't
| published anything new to for well over a year. There are a lot
| of podcasts out there that are pretty inactive and some were
| only intended as being limited series in the first place. So,
| yeah, if the universe of discoverable podcasts is 4 million it
| wouldn't surprise me at all if an order of magnitude fewer are
| creating new content. (Though older content, e.g. for The Big
| Dig limited series can still be historically noteworthy.)
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Podcasts should be thought of as limited runs, not like never
| ending radio programs. That's just the reality, regardless of
| the original intentions.
|
| I think the move to announced seasons is a good middle
| ground. It tempers expectations and gives creators a break or
| stopping point.
| ghaff wrote:
| There are definitely podcasts that are of historical
| interest. I mentioned the big dig one. My former company
| also did some computer-related podcasts that are sort of
| evergreen, e.g. related to Soul of a New Machine. There are
| also ones related to speculation about some current TV show
| that mostly have a pretty short shelf life.
|
| But agree generally. I think if I were to undertake a new
| podcast, I'd probably use seasons. Gives a good point to
| decide, nah, I'm done with this topic. Otherwise, the
| natural path is to just peter out.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure how you solve discoverability other than personal
| recommendation from someone with similar interests. As noted,
| there are a _ton_ of podcasts out there and many won 't overlap
| with your interests, others are largely or wholly inactive,
| others are poorly produced, etc. The fix, such as it is, is
| probably to have a podcast reviewer who isn't in it for payola,
| who overlaps with your interests and sensibilities who makes
| recommendations on a blog.
| sgu999 wrote:
| I love podcasts but discoverability is simply awful on Apple
| Podcasts, not to mention the rampant enshittification. What's
| better in their list of apps?
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Overcast is popular, but I would say its UI has also become
| worse over time:
|
| https://overcast.fm/
|
| But its less about discovery than tracking your library and
| playing them back.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't know if it has become worse but it has some UI quirks
| that confuse me from time to time.
| turnsout wrote:
| Give it some time--Marco just radically re-architected the
| app and is in the process of iterating the UI rapidly. He
| just added the ability to swipe in the main card again for
| example.
| dloss wrote:
| To discover new podcasts, I often search on
| https://www.listennotes.com/ for episodes about people or
| topics I find interesting.
| keyringlight wrote:
| I've been trying to get back into listening to podcasts over
| the past few years and something I've found is that the means
| of delivery is split. You can't rely on being available to
| subscribe to 'textbook definition' RSS based podcasts, it could
| also be on apple, spotify, youtube, an embedded player on their
| website, or any combination of those.
| dewey wrote:
| For me the best way was always personal recommendations from
| friends, sometimes also if a host of one show was a guest on
| another one.
|
| I tried to build a better way to see what my friends are
| listening to with https://lastcast.fm, but I've since shut down
| the project.
| harry_ord wrote:
| I mainly listen to audio dramas. I find reddit the best place
| to get recs either that or I give advertised podcasts in ones
| I'm listening to a try.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| The restriction against allowing @gmail accounts to sign up is
| kind of insane.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Probably to discourage spam
| compootr wrote:
| that's bass-ackwards reasoning. i can sign up with 500
| <randomness>@<my domain> emails
| sebnun wrote:
| I'm building a language learning app based on podcasts and I used
| "The Podcast Index" first but, as I understand, The Podcast Index
| is not currently scraping Apple and many of the podcasts in their
| index are dead. For better or worse Apple podcasts is the "de
| facto" index of podcasts, so I had to build my own podcast index
| based on itunes data.
|
| You can see a comparison of the different indexes (indices?) at
| https://podcastindustryinsights.com/
| willio58 wrote:
| Isn't the entire idea of the podcast index that they aren't
| relying on a single platform for their source of truth?
| Podcasts are decentralized by design so in theory all links to
| podcasts should be scrape-able in some way (just as Google
| scrapes websites). One of the sites the podcast index should
| scrape is Apple, but it should by no means be limited to a
| single platform.
| normand1 wrote:
| I use podcast index exclusively for podcast search and I've
| never been unable to find a podcast I was looking for there
| (just my experience in having used it for years)
| gweinberg wrote:
| My personal experience is, the second one I tried gave me a
| miss.
| EarlKing wrote:
| Not really that useful if I can't sort based on last publication,
| nor see how many episodes a given podcast has published when
| searching.
| andrybak wrote:
| Also no search by episode titles.
| benf76 wrote:
| The idea of the index is it acts as an API for apps to build
| search and other things on. It can do some searches but ya know
| what I mean.
| normand1 wrote:
| There are some great docs here for using the API:
| https://podcastindex-org.github.io/docs-api/#get-/search/byt...
| rosmax_1337 wrote:
| What kinds of, well, censorship, is applied to the platform for a
| lack of a better word?
|
| Maybe I wasn't able to scan the Terms of Service well enough,
| since I didn't see it defined there? They mention they can remove
| content there, but not why they would.
| valicord wrote:
| The better word is "content policy"
| benf76 wrote:
| The idea of the index is to prevent censorship
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Anecdotal, but I know the guys behind this. They're about as
| much free speech absolutists as you'll find. They're not going
| to remove anything unless it presents a large legal problem for
| them not to.
| dcmatt wrote:
| Really like what the Podcast Index is doing, especially with
| pushing Podcasting 2.0 (https://podcasting2.org/) and value for
| value! Just wish I could do v4v in currencies other than Bitcoin.
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