We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts • Hacker News Board

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#351

Post by agbell » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 2:43 PM UTC

and0 wrote: post #39

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 seriously enjoy humor or political / debate podcasts, especially while commuting, but technical podcasts never stick. I find when getting into a new framework (something like Rails or React) then it's an interesting bit of "immersion learning" to throw on the latest episode of the big associated podcast. Maybe I pick up a bit of knowledge, but just hearing people speak naturally about the framework helps me build a…

Immersion is a good term to use. I agree. You may not learn a lot of specific, but you may get the lay of the land in a low effort way.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#352

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 2:50 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #290

Spooky23 wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the partners collect big fees on the way in and out. Toys R Us is a great example. The PEG people invested 20%, dumped the debt on the Toys R Us balance sheet, and yielded at least $200M in fees. They are also able to harvest paper losses to offset taxes.

Pardon my ignorance, but who's paying their fees, and why would anyone pay fees to people who ruin companies and pocket fees for doing a poor job?

The acquired company. The people running the company are the people collecting the money.

Why would they do so? They are “turning the company around!”.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#353

Post by driverdan » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:04 PM UTC

jacobmoe wrote: post #343

driverdan wrote: post #137

While I agree there are plenty of great podcasts out there, I disagree with some of the things in the article. > When Netflix moved into streaming, they invested billions of dollars into original programming, helping usher in the “New Golden Age of Television” The current age of TV started long before Netflix moved to original content. This is not a model anyone should want to see in podcasts. Closed wall content is…

> Closed wall content is bad for everyone. You said that twice. It's not bad for subscribers. There's a good argument to be made that ad-driven content is bad for everyone. In fact there's an argument to be made that ad-driven content is ushering in the end of the world. Who was it that said "we're building dystopia to maximize clicks." If you pay for your media, you at least know what the product really is.

> You said that twice.

Yes, intentionally.

> There's a good argument to be made that ad-driven content is bad for everyone.

No disagreement here. I donate to independent podcasts directly. They get 100% of the money. Many of them have no ads or two versions, one that's free with ads or one that's paid with no ads. It's the best of both worlds.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#354

Post by pmart123 » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

elwesties wrote: post #241

pmart123 wrote: post #240

This could be a dumb question, but is there any service that lets you: 1. Bookmark a time in a podcast 2. Highlight/tag a section or snippet 3. Contextually search for phrases or words in a podcast ?

Overcast (iOS app) does the first of your points.

Awesome. Thanks. I'll check it out.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#355

Post by lenocinor » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

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.

I have this problem too. The other nice thing about music for me is that it regularly inspires emotions in me that are useful for writing fiction.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#356

Post by gmmeyer » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #315

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 acc…

Oh yea they're evil. I have no compunction about saying that

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#357

Post by samstave » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

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'…

What wee need is a pod-cast-to-text-blog-bot

A bot that will listen to the podcast, ML it and transcribe it into a blog post - when a term is stated verbally, it will look it up and turn it into a link. Over time we will teach the bot with verbal cues for what to lookup.

Basically a virtual Jamie from Joe Rogan's podcast "Pull up" "Google" "where is" "someone said" "lets see" "did you see" "did you read" etc can be triggers for the bot to pull up that relative content and put into the transcript...

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#358

Post by c4dna » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

The number of podcast creators keeps increasing, and with that, they are getting harder and harder to find, even the ones you already know.

The search tools and search directories need more advanced search options.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#359

Post by the_watcher » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

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 listened to Crimetown season 2 on Overcast, but you're right, it looks like it's been removed from the feed. I was hoping they'd approach it more like Stitcher has, where they continue to produce open podcasts, but offer additional episodes or only gate a limited number (and definitely expected that any Spotify-only podcasts would be brand new, as opposed to removing access to pre-existing ones).

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#360

Post by oska » Sat, Feb 23, 2019, 5:57 AM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #353

jacobmoe wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Closed wall content is bad for everyone. You said that twice. It's not bad for subscribers. There's a good argument to be made that ad-driven content is bad for everyone. In fact there's an argument to be made that ad-driven content is ushering in the end of the world. Who was it that said "we're building dystopia to maximize clicks." If you pay for your media, you at least know what the product really is.

> You said that twice. Yes, intentionally. > There's a good argument to be made that ad-driven content is bad for everyone. No disagreement here. I donate to independent podcasts directly. They get 100% of the money. Many of them have no ads or two versions, one that's free with ads or one that's paid with no ads. It's the best of both worlds.

> Many of them have no ads or two versions, one that's free with ads or one that's paid with no ads. It's the best of both worlds.

I disagree with this strategy. In my opinion, pushing advertising on anyone is immoral and just because I can pay to get out of it doesn't absolve the podcaster who's still putting ads in the 'free' version.

A good podcaster doesn't push ads, full stop.