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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

#311

Post by athrun »

intrasight wrote: post #86

I consume these types of media in order of consumption volume 1. Podcasts 2. The Economist (text and audio) 3. Youtube Podcast listening dominates. I had started listening to podcasts when I was having trouble sleeping and wanted to stop using drugs (Trazodone) to help me sleep. I still use podcasts for that purpose, but I also now listen to them any time that I am able - like driving or doing chores or yardwork. It'…

Note that you can add The Economist's audio feed to your Podcast app. So your 1 and 2 can be the same :)

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#312

Post by anyfoo »

otikik wrote: post #51
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'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 My counterargument to that is that in order to do any of those things you need to have your eyes engaged with the content. I can listen to podcasts (or audiobooks) while at the gym, cooking, doing laundry, cleaning dishes, or going to pick my ki…

Fully agree. Podcasts are a big part of my life, and apart from making my not short commute actually enjoyable, they often have the effect of making me do more housework, because I don’t mind doing dishes, laundry or cooking while listening to them at all. I cannot just “sit there” and listen to a podcast, so to continue doing so I will do whatever other menial task needs to be done. This is a win-win: stuff that needs to be done anyway gets done, while I am entertained.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#313

Post by anyfoo »

jeremy7600 wrote: post #208
astura wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yeah, of course if you're just sitting in your living room you'd rather read than listen; however that's not really the use case of a Podcast. The value podcasts bring is you can consume them during times you can't read. During exercise, driving, walking to work, cleaning the house, cooking, and train/car rides (for people who get motion sick while reading in a moving vehicle). They turn tedious menial tasks in…

If you can pay attention while doing those things. I am not the OP, but if it isn't music, listening to anything while doing those things is a non-starter for me, especially driving.

It's true that it does not work for any task that you need to pay attention to. Folding laundry, cooking a known meal, cleaning anything and driving the standard commute, however? No problem at all. Maybe I need to rewind 15 seconds a few times (which is purposefully made easy) if something unexpected happens in the menial task, but most of the time those menial tasks leave more than enough attention for a podcast.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#314

Post by BurningFrog »

crusso wrote: post #194
BurningFrog wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

I have listened, and you're right that they're amazing. Perhaps OP is right that they would be better printed, but I doubt it, Carlin does speak with a passion.

In my defense, i did use the weasel word "mostly" :)

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#315

Post by mindslight »

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'm not saying iHeart is evil

I don't know why not. Back when they were known as Clear Channel, in the wake of 11SEP2001 they censored songs that went against the agenda of starting wars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_Channel_memorandum

(Ah, I see it has been spun as mere a suggestion. Just like I'm sure the managers at each station only passed along the suggestion. There couldn't have possibly been any accompanying social pressure, especially at that time, that would have made it a tacit order).

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#316

Post by BurningFrog »

pmoriarty wrote: post #247
crusso wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/

For me, the best series by far that Dan Carlin did was the one on Genghis Khan ("The Wrath of the Khans", I believe it's called). The WWI one was also quite engaging, though. Before hearing it, I really was not interested in WWI at all, but he managed to make it very interesting for me.

The Tuchman book "The Guns of August" is an amazing book on the first month of WW1.

https://www.amazon.com/Guns-August-Pulitzer-Prize-Winning-Ou...

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#317

Post by hunter2_ »

differentView wrote: post #294
ip26 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And aren't there plenty of interesting personal blogs out there?

Are there? How do I find them?

This is the crux of the issue. Either someone (perhaps the owner) tells you, or you ask someone who knows. The former is distinct from discoverability, so that's out. When you ask though, you want to ask someone who knows lots of things, which is likely to be corporate (major search engines).

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#318

Post by ferongr »

Mister_Snuggles wrote: post #270
jeremy7600 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can pay attention while doing those things. I am not the OP, but if it isn't music, listening to anything while doing those things is a non-starter for me, especially driving.

I'm roughly the same way. When driving the choice is that I either miss something on the road or miss something on what I'm listening to. I usually take public transit to work, but the buses are too noisy for me to actually get anything out of a podcast. I could use noise canceling headphones, but I find those just make the bus sound weird instead of getting rid of the noise.

Just get IEMs with properly fitting tips.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#319

Post by krinchan »

TylerE wrote: post #126
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…

As the millennial internet company market inevitably cools (Dollar Shave Club, Blue Apron, etc), where are all these podcasters gonna get ads from?

Many podcast platforms are already basically setting up ad networks. Content creators supply time stamps and the CDNs stitch in ads at the point of download into those.time stamps. At the moment, conversion rates are highest when the host reads the ads, so there's still a lot of work for the creator but minimal effort for the advertiser.

It's likely that eventually the bar will lower and people will stop minding less integrated ads. But the advertiser pays per download (right now, see next paragraph) and doesn't pay the host to do the reading, so from the buying end it's simple and generally they work with the Podcast hosting platform who then farms it out to creators.

NPR released their Remote Audio Data spec recently and many players are working to integrate it. Essentially the ID3 tags have several time stamps marked and a call back URL. The podcast player then delivers events to that URI indicating the listener listened through that time stamp with some other metadata.

The automation and ad network-ization is already in motion.

So to answer: the same place web pages get ads.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#320

Post by username223 »

differentView wrote: post #294
ip26 wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And aren't there plenty of interesting personal blogs out there?

Are there? How do I find them?

Hyperlinks, RSS, and a bit of routine maintenance. When you stumble upon an interesting article, subscribe to the author's feed. If you lose interest, unsubscribe. You will eventually end up with the information source you want.
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