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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

#61

Post by socrates1998 »

jessaustin wrote: post #54
socrates1998 wrote: post #29

I love podcasts. As a self-employed person who needs some light distraction but can't walk to a water cooler and just kill some time, they are perfect. I tried going back to the radio yesterday for a moment and almost threw up with the quality. Not sure if a "Netflix for podcasts" would work. Unless ad money dries up because advertisers think people skip them too much, then I am not sure what the advantage would be.…

The stuff Rogan advertises is so bizarre . It has been a couple of weeks since I listened to him, but the one I can remember best was some sort of payment app that supposedly paid the user to use the app. Then there have been various AM-radio-type "nutritional" products. Maybe mainstream firms don't want to be associated with him, but how do the goofballs he advertises come up with 8 figures every year?

The Cash App is very popular with working class people, which is a huge audience with Rogan. It's always in the top five finance apps.

But, yeah, some of the shit he has advertised is off the wall.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#62

Post by BurningFrog »

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.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#63

Post by hammock »

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.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#64

Post by bane »

One of the things that seems really interesting to me is how personal podcasts seem to be to listeners. People really spend time custom curating their lists. Many of the problems with podcasts pointed out below don't bother me in the least, but its because of what I tend to listen to, whereas I have entirely different problems I don't see reflected in anybody else's issues.

I think this really speaks to how customizable people's listening habits and needs are.

For example, I mostly listen to podcasts when doing dishes and cooking. And I focus on topics that don't really have a timeliness component, so it doesn't matter if the podcast doesn't release new episodes or I discover it years late.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#65

Post by hammock »

reificator wrote: post #30
Kye wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is it. I downloaded every episode of LeVar Burton Reads earlier this week. Over 2GB on top of the 400MB from the other handful I subscribe to. My last phone would complain about insufficient space long before now.

> LeVar Burton Reads I'll have to take a look at that one... Is it in a book ? It seems like a new reading rainbow ... https://youtu.be/uPqpmSWwuGk

Wow.. what is Reading Rainbow? I thought Lavar Burton Was a Star trek guy.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#66

Post by chooseaname »

naravara wrote: post #8
scottlocklin wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost never listen to podcasts for this reason, and because it is vastly more efficient to read than it is to listen to a couple of people talking who may or may not be sticking to the topic. It's funny the market effect, if you're, say, John Dolan, it's vastly more time efficient to spend an hour and a half talking to your buddy and get paid for it than it is to spend many hours researching and writing a 1000 or…

You just have to let go of the need to be "caught up" or hear everything. Most podcasts don't really need that much continuity, so the need to listen to them ALL or even the idea of a "backlog" is just FOMO. Think of it more like the old days of broadcast radio or TV. You listened to whatever happened to be on while you were listening and if you didn't hear something. . . who cares it's just entertainment? Most of my…

I tend not to listen to serial podcasts for this reason (unless traveling and I can binge on the plane).

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#67

Post by api »

Podcasting is probably the closest thing right now to the authenticity, diversity, and creativity of the early web. There's a massive diversity of podcasts out there on every subject and even many of the purely amateur ones are of very high quality.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#68

Post by icebraining »

Kye wrote: post #23
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 it. I downloaded every episode of LeVar Burton Reads earlier this week. Over 2GB on top of the 400MB from the other handful I subscribe to. My last phone would complain about insufficient space long before now.

The Nokia E66 (released in 2008) supported microSD cards of up to 8GBs. Together with the Nokia Podcasting app downloading them over Wifi, it didn't feel very different than today.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#69

Post by scriptkiddy »

king_magic wrote: post #52

Are we? Podcasts are pretty overwhelming - there’s so many of them, it’s so hard to catch up, and I’m so tired of Blue Apron ads read by the hosts of podcasts. Personally, I’ve pretty much stopped listening to anything outside of NPR One, which does an okay-to-pretty-good job of simplifying the experience of listening to podcasts (at least aligned to NPR). Even then the ads are super annoying.

The ads may be annoying, but consider that ad reads in podcasts are a much more ethical and sustainable advertising model than almost any other model out there. In addition, ad read time takes up at most 5% of the total run time of your average podcast.

People who do podcasts as a living or companies where podcasts are their primary revenue source need to make money somehow.

Take How Stuff Works for instance. They have some great informational podcasts like "Stuff you Should Know", "Stuff to Blow your Mind", "Stuff they don't want you to know", and "Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe". These podcasts cover very interesting, and sometimes, very important topics. How stuff works makes their money from selling ad reads in their podcasts and ad space on their blog. They are providing a valuable service and paying people to literally do nothing but research and produce podcasts. These people need to get paid.

My point is, while nobody actually likes ads, the model which podcasts employ is at least tolerable; especially when compared to something like ads on Youtube.

Re: We're Entering a Golden Age of Podcasts

#70

Post by reificator »

hammock wrote: post #65
reificator wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LeVar Burton Reads I'll have to take a look at that one... Is it in a book ? It seems like a new reading rainbow ... https://youtu.be/uPqpmSWwuGk

Wow.. what is Reading Rainbow? I thought Lavar Burton Was a Star trek guy.

He is, but he also had a show where he tried to encourage kids to read.

Nowadays I think people mostly remember the theme song:

> Take a look, it's in a book, a Reading Rainbow!

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