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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

#271

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

peterwwillis wrote: post #206
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'…

I don't know about you, but I find it hard to read while cooking, jogging, eating, driving, folding laundry, doing the dishes, sweeping/mopping.

Apart from driving, I don't even listen to music while doing any of those things. Even when driving, the radio is off most of the time.

Having music or a radio always on is a concept I simply don't get.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#272

Post by 40acres »

HN is fully of early adopter types so I'm not surprised to see the pessimism about the future of podcasts but this industry still has a long ways to go. Podcasting will probably never be as big as video (streaming, TV, YouTube, etc.) but it's a natural 21st century transition for radio to make. Podcasts have the same advantage as Spotify and Netflix in the sense that programming is not limited to a specific radio station or a specific time. The medium is also diverse enough to support a wide array of content.

The worst thing about podcasts is the ad reads, but with the right platform I'm sure it will get better. Another criticism is that many "professional" podcast are edited with the same cloth, they have that "NPR hipster" feel with a banjo and some strings in the background. But as more podcasts come up this too will be remedied.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#273

Post by asteli »

samstave wrote: post #112

I love falling asleep to Jo Rogan Podcasts. Also - to his credit, what I like about Joe Rogan, is that he brings on smart people and just is inquisitive and asks questions, and never over speaks them, treats them with respect and asks questions from a point of curiosity...

That quality of an interviewer is something that not all podcast hosts have. I find that if an interviewer is a trained journalist (i.e. Ira Glass), they do ask questions from a point of curiosity, even if they know the answer.

Contrast to someone like Dax Shepard, or in some cases Sam Harris, where they may monologue during an interview, or basically try to interject knowledge or anecdotes to prove they know the material. Harris I can deal with, and to his credit he will sometimes shut up and let the guest talk (e.g. Harris interviewing Zeynep Tufekci). I had to turn Shepard's podcast off after about 10 minutes.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#275

Post by atoav »

The golden age of podcasts is now, from here on I predict much much corparate efforts to destroy the free and decentralized thing the podcast scene is compared to other media.

Relatively little ads, relative many people self hosting, very direct connections between producers and listeners, not limited by my Plattform or patent – from now on it is going downhill.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#276

Post by ehsankia »

skiw wrote: post #257
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'…

As many others have said, podcasts are definitely necessary over text when doing things you can't read during (driving, exercising, etc.) Additionally, I enjoy podcasts for the personalities. This varies with the podcast, as some podcasts consist of generally the same content as something like a blog post, with a generic narrator reading from a script. However, most popular podcasts are popular not just for the conte…

Indeed. 100% of the times I listen podcasts, it's when doing tasks that I can't read during. Podcasts has brought pleasures to doing daily chores, driving, going grocery shopping, walking the dog, and so on.

Maybe too much so, I am finding that I maybe listen to too much podcast, to the point where I spend very little time in my own head, day dreaming and having my own thoughts. But that's an entirely separate issue.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#277

Post by ehsankia »

hammock wrote: post #63
spuz wrote: post #17

I am surprised that higher capacity storage on phones was not mentioned as a driver of podcast listenership. For me, when I upgraded to a phone that had 32GB of storage around 2014 I was finally able to store mp3s that would download automatically ready for me to listen to along with all the music and photos that we would otherwise fill up our phone storage with. Before this, it was actually pretty hard to be an avid…

This is not it.. anecdata I stream all the podcasts I listen to, many of which I actually watch on YouTube.. I have unlimited data or 20gb or something like that.. The "download a podcast/movie" is probably an important RITUAL for a lot of people, but I don't see actual lack of space as a key barrier.

You don't even have to stream. At any given morning before leaving my house I have around 20 podcasts preloaded. Assuming you spend 5 hours a day listening to podcast at 2x speed, and 1mb per minute for the audio, that's still only 600mb. Up to to 1GB to give yourself some options.

Realistically, people listen closer to 2-3 hours a day, and even day, you can preload for a whole week using only 2GB of storage.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#278

Post by ehsankia »

dgritsko wrote: post #20
spuz wrote: post #17

I am surprised that higher capacity storage on phones was not mentioned as a driver of podcast listenership. For me, when I upgraded to a phone that had 32GB of storage around 2014 I was finally able to store mp3s that would download automatically ready for me to listen to along with all the music and photos that we would otherwise fill up our phone storage with. Before this, it was actually pretty hard to be an avid…

This is a good point. Desktop/web clients have existed for a while, but I find that I listen to probably 90% of my podcasts on my smartphone. Prior to owning a phone with a large amount of storage, I just didn't really listen to podcasts (at least nowhere near the amount that I am now).

I would never listen to podcast sitting at my computer. 100% of my podcast listening is done while doing chores, walking or taking transit. That's why the rise of smartphones were crucial for the golden age of podcast.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#279

Post by ehsankia »

jccalhoun wrote: post #31

I hope that this leads to better podcast discovery. The categories on things like pocketcasts are way too broad. For example, go into the news & politics category and there are tons of true crime podcasts. I don't care about true crime. I just want to hear the news or political talk. In education there are tons of language learning shows and self-help garbage.

Absolutely. This is why I was hopeful at Google entering the Podcast scene. I was hoping they would use the large amount of data to push podcast recommendations forward.

I have yet to see anyone really doing anything like that, taking your list of subscribed podcasts and using that to recommend you new ones. Seems like a trivial and extremely useful service to provide.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#280

Post by Spooky23 »

intrasight wrote: post #106
blang wrote: post #88

I'm actually worried that podcasts are going the way of the web. What, for a while, was a weird world of enthusiasts talking about things that interests them seems to be morphing into a world of a few big corporate entities calling the shots. I have two reasons for these worries. 1) The purchase of Gimlet by Spotify mentioned in the article. 2) The purchase of Stuff Media by iHeart. The purchase of Gimlet is problema…

I tried some Gimlet podcasts but didn't find any of consistent quality. For me "consistent quality" means I'm willing to binge-listen every episode and in order.

Gimlet has an NPR narrative style that doesn’t work for everyone and can be a little too much.
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