attacusDec 12, 2022

“You can find us anywhere you get your podcasts.”

I *adore* this phrase, because it has been like two whole-ass decades and not one single venture capital darling has managed to unseat plain RSS as the distribution method for podcasts. Not one. (And they have really tried!)

Podcasts are just out there, like air. You don’t go to one place to get them; you get them from everywhere and anywhere. You can choose how you want to engage with them and manage them and it is legitimately heartwarming that nothing has ever gotten in the way of that being a fundamental fact.

This is the best of what the web is. It will never have a stock ticker or even a marketing scheme. Most people don’t even know it is there. But it endures (past the many, many attempts by squillionaire corporates to kill it) because of its absolute unshakable utility.

My suggestion: any time you hear “anywhere you get your podcasts”, send a little thanks to RSS for keeping the real web alive.

#RSS #Podcasts #ProtocolsNotProducts

Show threadTrolli Schmittlauch 🦥Dec 12, 2022

@attacus It's interesting that you take this as a positive sign, because I see this as a sign that the decentralised open podcast landscape might be loosing slowly but surely. Let me explain why:

While there is of course no single source for *all* podcast, each podcast indeed has this definite source: Its feed and the files linked to it, under a certain URI and domain. This feed is then often fed into directories like iTunes or even not-really-podcast platforms like Sp*tify.

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Show threadTrolli Schmittlauch 🦥

@attacus Thus, podcasts used to have a website with a big “Subscribe” link or button on them.

Saying “Wherever you get your podcasts” actually stops mentioning that single source. More and more often there are no fancy websites at that source; in contrast people are just told to rely on their intermediary of choice (directory) to even discover that podcast source.

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Dec 12, 2022 at 11:01pmWeb
Show threadTrolli Schmittlauch 🦥Dec 12, 2022

@attacus For users this appears like all podcasts were in fact coming from their single “platform”. And if it's not in the directory, they just assume it not to be available “for their platform”.

Unfortunately these not-really-podcast platforms are the ones most popular nowadays for listening, and exactly these platforms are also the ones striving for absolute control of the audio market.

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Show threadTrolli Schmittlauch 🦥Dec 12, 2022
@attacus So they can at one point just slowly cut off access to certain sources, because users are used to seeing them as the central source anyways.