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We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

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Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#191

Post by peu4000 »

istjohn wrote: post #171
emerongi wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what you are even exactly complaining about. Is it the UI? I agree that most podcast players just lack features. They're built for "dummies": you can subscribe and click play, that's mostly it. I'm a power-user. Podcast Addict on Android is the best player I have used, it has a ton of features and extreme customizability. Still, I am now using PocketCasts which is inferior by a wide margin, but it has sync c…

As a happy PocketCasts user, what am I missing out on that Podcast Addict has? Looking over the Play Store feature list, nothing jumps out.

I've used both and there isn't really a reason to pick one over the other.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#192

Post by iamwil »

> But unlike text-based news and blogs, which have gone through waves of centralization and disruption thanks to Facebook and Google, the podcast industry has remained stubbornly decentralized.

Anyone know why podcasting has remained stubbornly decentralized? What are the market forces that lead this to happen?

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#193

Post by miker64 »

TylerE wrote: post #152
paulryanrogers wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At my last job we worked in internet tech for radio stations. Most of the station money came from the auto industry. I guess that makes sense since a non-smart radio fits with driving better than touch screens. EDIT: Forgot to mention, all that to say, it'll probably come from markets that fit how/when/where consumers listen: exercise, entertainment, etc.

Terrestrial radio is also reasonably location targeted. Can’t really do that with podcasts, at least not with any sort of reliability.

Ads can (and already are) stitched into podcasts based on download location. GeoIP isn't perfect, but it's enough to do location aware advertising in the same vein as terrestrial radio..

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#194

Post by crusso »

BurningFrog wrote: post #62
Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #24

Personally, I'm not a fan of podcasts at all. I've tried, and listened to some interesting ones, but in the end I'd much rather consume the same content by reading instead of listening. It's faster, it's easier to skim and skip around, you can have hyperlinks to other references, etc. Overall, text just works better for the kinds of content I'm interested in. There's a podcast related to a product I work with that I'…

Podcasts aren't for reading a prepared text. They're mostly for conversations.

Listen to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History series on World War I, and it will change your mind on the need for a podcast to have a conversation.

https://www.dancarlin.com/

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#195

Post by skywhopper »

schnevets wrote: post #58

Creators may be entering a golden age, but the delivery methods and infrastructure have been stagnant for years now. We now have ongoing shows, evergreen episodic shows, "two amateurs in a basement" niche shows, 12-episode and it's done audiobooks, and various other designations of podcasts, and yet we still serve everything like it's a blog that needs to release content weekly. I also find it frustrating that we onl…

I'm of two minds on this. Sure improvements could be made, but the dead-simple infrastructure is part of what makes podcasts so appealing and what has kept them going. You can fetch an episode or subscribe to a feed, and that's about it. Old unmaintained stuff can continue to be available for ages. No one cares where it's hosted.

All the categorization stuff is totally outside of the podcasts themselves. Sure the default podcast apps suck, but lots of people have tried to do better and haven't caught on in a significant way. There are any number of alternative ways to get podcasts that I hear about all the time on the podcasts I listen to, have you tried those?

But ultimately, I don't think we want a rework of the infrastructure. It's not going to end well for podcasters or podcast listeners. User tracking, ad injection, and platform lock-in will be the priorities of the people who build the next successful podcast protocol.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#196

Post by danschuller »

schnevets wrote: post #58

Creators may be entering a golden age, but the delivery methods and infrastructure have been stagnant for years now. We now have ongoing shows, evergreen episodic shows, "two amateurs in a basement" niche shows, 12-episode and it's done audiobooks, and various other designations of podcasts, and yet we still serve everything like it's a blog that needs to release content weekly. I also find it frustrating that we onl…

I like to listen on desktop and as far as I'm concerned there's nothing good.

For Mac I suffer itunes. For Windows, I ended up installing Blue Stacks and using Google's Podcast app. Nothing native or web-based worked well for me. Unreliable or being delivered through Windows Store which constantly crashes for me were my main issues.

For a while I used live bookmarks with Firefox, that was great but shortly after Firefox removed that feature :)

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#197

Post by slg »

dangoor wrote: post #175
slg wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, we might be leaving the golden age rather than entering it. The article mentions Spotify exclusive shows and we have already seen several other paywalled shows from companies like Audible and Stitcher. Meanwhile a number of podcasters are taking control of their own shows, not joining a podcast network or content company, and moving the show to platforms like Patreon. That is great for the content creators t…

> That is great for the content creators themselves, but it hurts discoverability and just isn't great for the podcast listener. I subscribe to a couple of shows which offer free versions, discoverable through Apple's directory and others, and paid "upgrades". Those paid upgrades come into the same app I use for listening to podcasts generally. I actually think things today are pretty well set up for podcasters who w…

I subscribe to a few as well. The some episodes free and some paid model is the better for discoverability than everything behind a paywall, but it can still be off-putting to new listeners. Although my primary problem with that model is that it isn't sustainable for heavy listeners. Each show can cost anywhere from $2-$10 per month. That adds up quickly. I end up spending more on podcasts a month than I do on Netflix, Hulu, and Spotify combined. I am happy to do that because I spend more time listening to podcasts than using those three services and I want to support the content creators I enjoy, but that isn't financially realistic for an overwhelming majority of consumers.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#198

Post by blotter_paper »

dublinben wrote: post #182
blotter_paper wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. An RSS feed of .mp3 or .ogg files is all I need for all of the formats mentioned by OP. It is annoying that some podcasts don't have RSS feeds -- this is what feels like a step back to me, but it's fundamentally a choice of the author/publisher. I'm much less likely to consume a podcast's backlog if it's not available as an RSS feed, and if the only obvious way to play content is through an embedded player or a…

If there isn't an RSS feed linking to audio files can you really call it a podcast?

Interesting question. I've seen collections of audio content claiming to be podcasts that don't have RSS feeds, so the term is definitely used that way. Whether that makes it a valid definition is open to interpretation, the word is pretty new still. Merriam-Webster seems to think that an automated download mechanism is required, though it doesn't specify RSS in particular:

>a program (as of music or talk) made available in digital format for automatic download over the Internet

I can see arguing that this doesn't even rule out walled-garden streams with an auto-play feature, since streaming and downloading are functionally the same (the only difference being what type of memory the data is stored in, and swap memory destroying that distinction entirely).

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#199

Post by bloopernova »

rhacker wrote: post #127

I have a serious question: For those of you that like podcasts, did your usage go way down (or even stop) when you got married? I listened to them all the time back in the day, but mostly because they were tech oriented. For husband / wife activities only video/youtube/netflix seem to work. Is there any notion that Podcasts are better for people not in relationship thing? I mean you have to either play it for the hou…

99% of my podcast listening is done with my spouse. We've been together 10 years, she got into podcasts a couple of years ago as an alternative to broadcast TV. I would catch snippets of her podcast playlist when she was cooking or otherwise doing something while listening via a speaker rather than headphones. Since I was interested in some of the subjects that came up, I asked to listen to them with her.

We often listen during dinner together, pause to discuss when we hear something we want to talk about, and generally approach it as a group activity.

We started with The Dollop together, but I've soured on that lately because it's become depressing rather than interesting (at least to me). We listen to Sinisterhood (true crime, weird stuff, conspiracies, ghost stories etc), My Favourite Murder minisodes (true crime and user stories that all seem pretty made up), This Podcast Will Kill You (diseases discussed by doctorate students), No Such Thing As A Fish (facts from the people who research for QI), Infinite Monkey Cage (science stuff), etc etc. It's fun, we get to laugh (as most of our stuff has an undercurrent of humour and flippant discussion), and we get to learn stuff too.

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