this post was submitted on 09 Feb 2024
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[…] being able to say, "wherever you get your podcasts" is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.

What podcasting holds in the promise of its open format is the proof that an open web can still thrive and be relevant, that it can inspire new systems that are similarly open to take root and grow.

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[–] [email protected] 165 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (7 children)

If those Joe Rogan fans could read, they would be very upset right now!

EDIT: Oh you know what? I just fact-checked myself and apparently that podcast is no longer Spotify-exclusive as of very recently. I hope you enjoyed the joke anyway.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Everything is better when it ends with a fact check.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

For these guys? Yes! Probably about HIV or something.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I guess it’s better than hearing “So that’s what you consider average?”

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

"Time for a fact check, baby."

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago

"Did that just happen?"

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Many creators are moving away from exclusivity agreements. I think that's great.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

Yeah, it's much better for everyone except the rent-seeking company... And it isn't even bad for the rent-seeker, they're just deprived of the gains they would obtain from harming the ecosystem by fragmenting it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

They're paying him $250M starting this year. I think it's about to be exclusive to Spotify again.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 6 months ago (5 children)

When people push listening on Spotify even though the podcast is available everywhere else I roll my eyes.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 6 months ago (5 children)

One of my main motivations for cancelling my Spotify subscription was their insistence on capitalising on podcasts. They have a perfectly fine business model with music, why do they need to ruin podcasts?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah the locking down podcasts for exclusivity to me is really fucking toxic and totally counter to what podcasts used to stand for. Really pissed me off when Gimlet went Spotify only and Reply All was no longer available elsewhere. Very anti consumer.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago

Because they don't have a perfectly fine business model. They get squeezed hard by both the oligarchs of music publishing UMG, Sony Warner who negotiate the price for the music. And from the other side by the tech giants google and apple who can cross service subsidize their own streaming.There exists essentially no space for them to make any profit in streaming music. So they have to go other places.

The only reason they'll probably exist for the foreseeable future is because the rights holders are able to use Spotify to have more negotiating power against Google and apple.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Whenever I'm talking with someone about my podcast and they ask, "can I find it on Spotify?" a little part of me dies.

Like, yes it's available on Spotify, because it's available everywhere. But I strongly dislike what Spotify tried to do to podcasting, and there are much better apps out there.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (5 children)

I use spotify daily like most people these days. I'm not married to it, but it is easy to use (most of the time) and has the best selection of everything (for the most part). What app is a better use of my time for music and podcasts?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

I like using AntennaPod for podcasts and Spotify for music.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I literally stopped listening to Rogan when he moved to Spotify even though I already had an account and used it, because their app was such garbage at the time.

It's slightly less garbage now.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (4 children)

I don't understand their podcasts. It isn't sectioned off or organised in any kind of way.

I tried it out and still regret it, because even after unsubscribing from all of the podcasts I still get notified of new episodes all the time.

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 6 months ago (5 children)

Could someone explain to me (I'm a developer so use whatever terms you like, maybe), how does the massive amount of podcasts reach the world? Say if I wanted to make a podcast app (I don't, I love Pocket Casts), where would I sync the massive list'o'casts? Does it work like that? Or do you scrape the entire internet? What is happening?

[–] [email protected] 85 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (5 children)

It's done via RSS feeds that the podcast creators then submit to aggregators. Then apps pull that information down from said aggregators. This website explains the gist of it.

https://rss.com/blog/how-to-create-an-rss-feed-for-a-podcast/

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The protocol used for it is a bit of an older protocol, but basically it uses the RSS protocol. It came out in the 90s and hasn't been updated since 2014, and I haven't touched any code related to it since before 2019. Otherwise, it'd just be standard HTTPS for websites like Spotify etc and whatever podcast discovery system they have on their site etc.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (3 children)

iTunes api, and if apple turns evil there are other list-o-cast apis like fyyd.de.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago

iTunes api, and if apple turns evil there are other list-o-cast apis like fyyd.de.

Whoever downvoted this has no clue. The Apple Podcast directory is currently unrestricted for any podcatcher to crawl and to get the RSS feeds. That may change at some point but for now it's actually the best maintained RSS feed directory. The aforementioned fyyd.de is a good but less complete alternative. It relies of community submissions. fyyd.de itself is not an open source service, though.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 months ago (2 children)

if apple turns evil

Lolol yeah like that could EVER happen! /s

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Compared to Reddit or Twitter anyway, they haven't killed their API yet so apps like pocket casts are mainly using iTunes for search

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 months ago (11 children)

...exactly the kind of technology that's supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that's not owned by any one company, that can't be controlled by any one company...

Who is suggesting that such technology is impossible? The internet is literally exactly this, based on an open standard (Internet Protocol) which is not controlled by any proprietary group.

IP wasn't the first computer networking standard to be developed, but its open nature made it accessible to any interested manufacturers and that made it the most successful standard.

Anyone suggesting that this "kind of technology" is "supposed to be impossible" is either ignorant or stupid, or both.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago (1 children)

If IP was developed today, you'd be paying IBM or a similar corp royalties for every network adapter manufactured. Thats whats supposed to be impossible in today's late-stage hyper-capitalism web.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

IBM tried that in the 60s, 70s and 80s with their business mainframe systems, along with HP and several other manufacturers. Before IP gained prominence every major manufacturer had its own proprietary connection system they tried to sell, and the competition in the market was just as fierce then as it is now.

It didn't work, the open model made all of the proprietary network systems obsolete.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I'm also not sure I can agree with that it's "a radical statement". It is... not? Unless I misunderstand what others mean with radical in this context, but linguistically it should the form free of pre- and suffixes and qualifiers, no?

So in this context, "wherever you get your podcasts" is... not very radical. That'd be not actually stating anything in regards to your podcasting platform, as it is in itself a qualifier for something else in that sentence, and hence removed.

It's also not radical in the political sense of course, but I kinda figured that's not what is being alluded to here anyways as it'd inherently not make any sense.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

The IP helped the Internet to establish. But once established we see trends to try to limit the very technology into propriety. Think of the Facebook internet access schemes that tried to make everything go through facebook. Think of the attempts to make priviledged and throttled websites based on what the ISP likes...

When Podcasts were new, the open standard was embraced, but now we see attempts to make them exclusive too. Just that they didn't prevail yet.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I think what the author meant was that it's impossible in the capitalist marketplace.

Joe Rogan is probably a good anti-example. His podcast (as I understand it anyway) is only available on Spotify. But Conan O'Brien, the Office Ladies, and even The West Wing Weekly (which hasn't been producing in years) is still available, for free, on any podcast platform.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 months ago (9 children)

AntennaPod (OpenSource) and I subscribe to RSS feeds. How else would you do it? Spotify? That crap can't even reliably store where I paused last time.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (4 children)

It’s no more radical than saying… “wherever you get your gasoline.” It’s just a thing to say because theres more than one source, and there being more than one source is not radical.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 months ago

No?

There's only a handful of places you can get gasoline? It's almost entirely controlled by a few companies who control the majority of the pipeline.

You can't buy directly from the people making the oil.

A better example for the point you're trying to make is "whenever you get your apples".

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

I always thought it was a jab at Spotify being all-powerful. Anytime you hear a commercial for a podcast, they always mention Apple Podcasts first, then maybe Stitcher gets a name-drop, but they NEVER say to listen to the podcast on spotify.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 months ago
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[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago

upvote this wherever you get your federated content.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Podcasts are a sort of last bastion of internet freedom. Anyone can publish anywhere and be visible on all platforms.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Email newsletters kinda are too. You use a service to send them, but the list itself remains yours and can be moved around. No algorithm bullshit in your way. They're making a comeback lately it seems.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 months ago

It's only radical if it is not preceeded by "Apple podcasts, Spotify,...."

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago

I have no idea where I get my podcasts; I hit Add Podcast in AntennaPod, it goes somewhere and I get a podcast subscription somehow. Can't explain that.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago (2 children)

Easy to do when it's just audio files with no user interaction though. Neat that it's continued existence in this manner at least, even if the big companies have steered toward trying to be the podcast platform.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Did anyone listen to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code podcast? I remember him being very excited about the possibility of escaping the gatekeepers of traditional media. If i remember correctly, he was a major and important proponent of the open nature of podcasts.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Whenever you get your podcasts, is it's not RSS, it's not podcasts.

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