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Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

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Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#121

Post by armoredkitten »

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.

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#123

Post by rchaud »

MentallyRetired wrote: post #26

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.

Media has never been FOSS. Radio stations do not play artists by random lottery, they play whoever paid up to get played.

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#124

Post by tpmx »

pixxel wrote: post #41
LatteLazy wrote: post #37

Aside from Joe Rogan (who's gone a bit barmy) I have no problem getting rss feeds for everything I want...

Barmy? I've not listened since his move to Spotify. What's happened?

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.

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#125

Post by loosetypes »

Lendal wrote: post #76
mrweasel wrote: post #35

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 "ca…

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 provid…

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.

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#126

Post by blfr »

qudat wrote: post #65
dna_polymerase wrote: post #12

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…

> 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.

But that's just Google controlling your content rather than Spotify. Not really open either way.

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#128

Post by lchengify »

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.

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#129

Post by Mountain_Skies »

TameAntelope wrote: post #114
redisman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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 t…

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."

Re: Spotify is killing the open podcast ecosystem (2020)

#130

Post by hellohiyesokay »

iscrewyou wrote: post #110
Lendal wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 provid…

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 o…

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.
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