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Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

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Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#71

Post by gringoDan »

It's interesting to see this evolution of media over time.

It used to be that it didn't matter who you were - the distribution channel was all that mattered. For example, MTV could make you famous in an instant, but the second the channel let you go and replaced you with the next flavor of the week, you were out of luck.

More recently, we've moved to a model where the platform and medium are less important than the personality. Think Joe Rogan, who pushes his podcast out to every channel possible. Or Barstool Sports, which has various content in the form of podcasts, blogs, YouTube videos, etc.

These power law podcasters (Joe Rogan, Tim Ferriss, etc.) can make more money on their own than through exclusivity with a distribution network. But they are few and far between, and require an entire support system to handle ads, cross-posting content, business admin, etc.

So it seems that the majority of full-time podcasters and content creators, after attracting an audience, will move back towards a walled garden of content.

If you're a creator making a living off of your work, would you rather spend 75% of your time on business admin and cobble together your income through ad and merch sales? Or sign with Apple or Spotify, collect a salary, and spend 100% of your time creating art?

We haven't come full-circle, though. While these creators are locked into the platform, people are coming to the platform for the creators themselves. The creators have far more power than they used to. But the consumer has to pay for a "cable package" of podcast apps and video streaming apps.

Corollary: Lots of people no longer root for teams, but for their favorite athletes. I see a ton of this especially in the NBA, where people are LeBron fans first and just root for whatever team he's currently playing for.

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#72

Post by bscphil »

snailmailman wrote: post #65
Swenrekcah wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree that if it’s not accessible on any app then it’s not a podcast. I also would pay for a podcast app that could guarantee that the audio file was the same for all listeners.

I wish the later could be possible. I have no idea how podcast-ads work but lately i noticed some podcasts giving me seemingly location-dependent ads. (about something in a nearby major city) either everyone is getting advertisements for a very dallas targeted ad, or are the podcast companies making several versions of the podcast and serving different ones to different people? sounds like a lot of extra work to me,…

I agree - actually I've gotten into the habit of trying to track down the original RSS feed for each podcast I listen to. Often the link shared by the podcaster will be to rehosters like Google Play or iTunes, or lesser-known services, that have tracking and probably the ability to insert custom ads. The worst is when they make the elitist move of only linking iTunes, making their podcast unlistenable (on mobile at least) to most people worldwide.

But most of the time the original file is getting pulled by the rehoster from an unprotected RSS feed, and these can be easy to find. You can get the RSS feeds for Soundcloud, as an example. Others are hosted on Libsyn.com, and you can often find them by searching for the podcast name and "site:libsyn.com" in the search engine of your choice.

That said, I don't listen to podcasts enough any more to say whether this is a universal solution at all. Actually, the fact that podcasts have unblockable ads is one of the main reasons I no longer bother.

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#73

Post by neves »

MBCook wrote: post #2

This is very unfortunate. Apple being totally hands off, other than running the iTunes podcast directory, is one of the best things that’s ever happened for podcasts. I like my 3rd party app (Overcast). I don’t want to have to use 3 podcast apps to listen to all my podcasts. I think I agree with some of the podcast app developers: if it’s not available in any app it shouldn’t be called a ‘podcast’.

I see a lot of good podcast apps for Apple but I couldn't find a nice one for Android. I would like to pay for one, but I can't a reasonable one that allows me to make my playlists and speed listen without drowning me in ads. Sure I can spend hours trying each one of the dozens, but would my fellow HN have any suggestion?

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#74

Post by baddox »

anchpop wrote: post #32
marmada wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the difference between exclusive podcasts and making a website that only runs on Safari? In both scenarios it is a company giving their product an artificial advantage. There's no technical reason that a website should only run on one browser, it kind of feels the same way with podcasts. Then again Netflix makes Netflix originals, which are only available on Netflix, and I don't mind that, so I guess my viewp…

> Then again Netflix makes Netflix originals, which are only available on Netflix, and I don't mind that There are arguments for why this could be a bad thing. Originals/exclusives have the effect of giving an "unfair" advantage to the company who makes them, because to watch them you need to subscribe to their service. This allows them to compete in avenues other than price and quality of service. This is a similar…

I mean, yeah, all else being equal, it would be better for consumers to have access to any content they want on any app or device. But it's a bit difficult to imagine how "making exclusives illegal" would work, exactly. Would content producers be required to sell their content to every distribution network for the same price, so that every streaming service could, if they wanted to, make a profit by effectively charging more for the content?

What if the content producer just wanted to sell the raw video file of their movie to consumers directly? I.e. you go to the movie's website, pay, and download an .mp4 file? That's not much different than how Netflix works, except that DRM makes it tricky for the layperson to move that file around to other devices or video players.

So perhaps what this law would look like is just a ban on DRM, although even if that happened, and the content producer had an app or website that took payment and served DRM-free video files, there's no simple way to move that file around, particularly on mobile phones or TV streaming boxes, so I think the sheer convenience of using the content producer's app or website would still result in largely the same "unfair" advantage to large content producers or unions of content producers.

Another legal alternative might be to simply require content producers and distribution networks to be owned by different companies. I believe that idea has been proposed by Elizabeth Warren and others, although I don't know if it's a very fully-fledged proposal or if it would be a good idea. It seems like the distribution networks would still have massive economies of scale and thus the few really big networks would have leverage over customers and content producers that would still result in a lot of exclusivity.

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#75

Post by m463 »

ihuman wrote: post #37
jfengel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of ironic, since the name "podcast" comes from the Apple iPod. If anybody would have first dibs on the name "podcast", it's them.

Apple didn't create the term podcast, though. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038m811

There's also quite a name collision with this company's product that has remained surprisingly civil with apple

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_6_(company)

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#76

Post by MBCook »

fetus8 wrote: post #57
microdrum wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although I personally don’t like Overcast because of the ad injection (which I consider immoral) and the hypocrisy of its author being anti-ads in general (not to mention having built Tumblr, which turned out to be a porn obfuscation service), I agree that this is a bad move by Apple. Doesn’t matter: podcasts are going to go the way of TV, radio, and movies anyway.

I've been using Overcast, and have noticed that with certain podcasts, the audio ad-breaks seem to come in the middle of sentences, and there's no segue from podcast content to ad-read. Is that what you're referring to by "ad injection"? Or is just that the creator sucks at editing?

That’s called ‘Dynamic Ad Injection’. It’s not Overcast, in fact Marco gets complaints about it.

It’s the podcast host adding ads in via automated means that are supposedly customized for each listener. And doing a poor job of it.

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#77

Post by nyc640 »

neves wrote: post #73
MBCook wrote: post #2

This is very unfortunate. Apple being totally hands off, other than running the iTunes podcast directory, is one of the best things that’s ever happened for podcasts. I like my 3rd party app (Overcast). I don’t want to have to use 3 podcast apps to listen to all my podcasts. I think I agree with some of the podcast app developers: if it’s not available in any app it shouldn’t be called a ‘podcast’.

I see a lot of good podcast apps for Apple but I couldn't find a nice one for Android. I would like to pay for one, but I can't a reasonable one that allows me to make my playlists and speed listen without drowning me in ads. Sure I can spend hours trying each one of the dozens, but would my fellow HN have any suggestion?

Have you tried Pocket Casts? Any reason it doesn’t work for you?

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#79

Post by dageshi »

neves wrote: post #73
MBCook wrote: post #2

This is very unfortunate. Apple being totally hands off, other than running the iTunes podcast directory, is one of the best things that’s ever happened for podcasts. I like my 3rd party app (Overcast). I don’t want to have to use 3 podcast apps to listen to all my podcasts. I think I agree with some of the podcast app developers: if it’s not available in any app it shouldn’t be called a ‘podcast’.

I see a lot of good podcast apps for Apple but I couldn't find a nice one for Android. I would like to pay for one, but I can't a reasonable one that allows me to make my playlists and speed listen without drowning me in ads. Sure I can spend hours trying each one of the dozens, but would my fellow HN have any suggestion?

I've used Podcast Addict for years, I don't use playlists or change the playback speed but after just checking it looks like you can do both.

Re: Apple Plans to Bankroll Original Podcasts to Fend Off Rivals

#80

Post by cm2187 »

Audio is so trivially pirated (and in fact was pretty much the first resource to be pirated in the 90s) that I don't know how many seconds they really expect this content to remain exclusive. All they will achieve is to limit the audience of these podcasts, but if users are keen to listen to them...
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