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Apple To Soon Let Podcast Creators and Advertisers See What Listeners Actually Like (sixcolors.com)

Posted by msmash on from the about-time dept.

Big changes are coming to the podcasting world: Apple is going to let the people who make podcasts learn what podcast listeners actually like -- and what they ignore. A new version of Apple's Podcasts, which is by far the most popular podcast app, will provide basic analytics to podcast creators, giving them the ability to see when podcast listeners play individual episodes, and -- more importantly -- what part of individual episodes they listen to, which parts they skip over, and when they bail out of an episode. From a report: New extensions to Apple's podcast feed specification will allow podcasts to define individual seasons and explain whether an episode is a teaser, a full episode, or bonus content. These extensions will be read by the Podcasts app and used to present a podcast in a richer way than the current, more linear, approach. Users will be able to download full seasons, and the Podcasts app will know if a podcast is intended to be listened to in chronological order -- "start at the first episode!" -- or if it's more timely, where the most recent episode is the most important. [...] Apple is also opening up in-episode analytics of podcasts. For the most part, podcasters only really know when an episode's MP3 file is downloaded. Beyond that, we can't really tell if anyone listens to an episode, or how long they listen -- only the apps know for sure.

14 of 23 comments (clear)

  1. Result of over-analyzing media by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    So, why would this be interesting to listeners ? I can clearly see this leading the less and less interesting podcasts. Same thing with TV. If you can instantly analyze everything, and only measure by attendance count as a quality, the result will lean more and more towards what the mass majority wants.

    Porn, conflict, in short: junk.

    Is this a good thing ? To produce only the spam-like product the masses demand ? Well, look at the media landscape of the American TV. Thousands of channels, but mostly the same plain junk. Everyone hunting viewers, clicks, likes.

    Sad development indeed.

    1. Re:Result of over-analyzing media by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      It's not directly interesting to listeners. I know that CBC Radio dropped some of their podcasts because they couldn't get this information (how many times it was listened to, if any) and went to streaming only. It sucks for me because streaming doesn't work for me at all. I liked having the episodes just show up for me automatically but with streaming I always have to remember to go and listen to it. Then with streaming, at least with their system when it started, I had to use my cell data if I was out on the go. Maybe with these changes they will bring it back but I don't like my usage data being sent back so if I can't shut it off I'm going to find another podcast app.

  2. Worked great for the History Channel by FilmedInNoir · · Score: 1

    or so ancient astronaut theorists would have us believe.

    --
    Sig. Sig. Sputnik
  3. Open Podcasting by coastwalker · · Score: 1

    I know this might be regarded as antediluvian but I use gPodder and do not participate in the Apple iTunes walled garden. If I cannot get a RSS feed then I am not going to listen. In the same way that we regard open source software with respect I also think that "open podcasting" should be respected.

    --
    Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
    1. Re:Open Podcasting by DonkeyG5 · · Score: 1

      You can subscribe to any podcast in iTunes through its URL.

    2. Re:Open Podcasting by tlhIngan · · Score: 2

      I know this might be regarded as antediluvian but I use gPodder and do not participate in the Apple iTunes walled garden. If I cannot get a RSS feed then I am not going to listen. In the same way that we regard open source software with respect I also think that "open podcasting" should be respected.

      Except w.r.t. podcasts, iTunes was never closed or walled. It just happened to be a popular way of automatically downloading, syncing and managing podcasts. You really just point iTunes at an RSS feed and it it does it all.

      The Podcasts app is similar - it recognizes iTunes information blobs to add an RSS feed to it,

      None of that is going away - it's just that Apple is making available analytics to those who want it.

      This came about because podcasters wanted Apple to give them something - the ability to make money or paid subscriptions, or even just analytics so they could get more than just something that can post MP3 files and such.

    3. Re:Open Podcasting by Anubis+IV · · Score: 2

      I know this might be regarded as antediluvian but I use gPodder and do not participate in the Apple iTunes walled garden. If I cannot get a RSS feed [...]

      There isn't a walled garden with Apple podcasts.

      Unlike Stitcher and the other closed podcasting ecosystems that I vehemently oppose, Apple's podcast ecosystem (if we can even call it that) is nothing more than the world's largest directory of externally hosted RSS feeds for podcasts. That's it. They provide some default clients you can use, but the RSS feeds are all hosted elsewhere, and there's nothing about either the clients or the directory that locks you in (other than an inability to export your subscriptions, I suppose, though that feature isn't exactly common in podcast clients anyway). In fact, because Apple doesn't host any of the feeds itself, other podcast players, such as Overcast, have been able to bootstrap their own directories by scraping Apple's podcast directory for feeds.

      In terms of their actual announcement, what's happening here is that they are adding some new fields that their clients will parse if the podcaster chooses to add those fields to their RSS feed. Podcasters who do so will be able to tell Apple's clients how the podcast should be listened to. Obviously, because the podcasters are hosting their own feeds, other clients will have the same access to that same data, so any other clients that would like to parse those fields will be able to take advantage of them to accomplish the same thing.

      On the reverse side, Apple's podcast clients will begin providing some analytic data back to podcasters. Again, nothing about that locks the podcasters or the listeners into Apple's ecosystem, though it does make listens that occur via Apple's clients more valuable to podcasters and advertisers, since they'll be able to pull numbers out of them.

    4. Re:Open Podcasting by Karlt1 · · Score: 1

      There has never been anything about Apple's podcast support that is a wall garden. Apple doesn't host podcasts, it merely provides a directory of RSS feeds that are hosted by the submitter. Apple's podcast directory is used by many third party podcast players because it is the most comprehensive.

  4. Re:I skip the ads by woozlewuzzle · · Score: 1

    If I know the majority of my listeners skip the ads, I'll likely stop using ads and find another way to fund my project. Heck, the advertisers will want to see proof their ads are being listened to, otherwise they'll pull their ads. Granted, I don't use ads on my podcast, but knowing that my intro our outro music is being skipped tells me I shouldn't waste my (or my listener's) time with it.

  5. Re:I skip the ads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Please, please skip the intro and outro music, and the intro speech. A lot of podcast apps have a custom setting of 'skip the first xxx' minutes of each podcast for this reason - a lot of my favorite podcasts I set to begin at between one and even (in one particularly egregious case) 12 minutes in, depending on how much rubbish the host adds before they get to the real content. Sometimes I end up skipping back a little, but usually not....

  6. Fuck Apple by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 2

    How about fixing the app first! I'm tired of having to clear up podcasts that haven't been removed if I listened to it on my computer. If I'm at my computer I'm going to listen to my podcast with my computer because I have better speakers attached to it. When I sync my phone those episodes are marked as played but aren't removed from the list. If I play an episode on the iPhone it gets marked as played and removed from the list. They took the ability to set the rating (it disappeared in Music too but there's only a setting to return it for Music). I swear that these people don't use the products they work on.

    I'm just getting tired of Apple always adding in shiny new features while ignoring what needs to be fixed. I hate to think what changes they are going to make with iOS 11 that will make it more difficult to use. Things keep needing more steps to complete. It used to be about hiding the complexity and making the devices easy to use. That philosophy is gone in order to make more money.

  7. Re:I skip the ads by schleimkeim · · Score: 1

    If I know the majority of my listeners skip the ads, I'll likely stop using ads

    You can safely assume that everybody fucking hates ads and skips them.

  8. Re:I skip the ads by woozlewuzzle · · Score: 1

    And yet some podcasts, such as Wooden Overcoats, have had success with their ads, so some people don't seem to mind them.

  9. Re:I skip the ads by schleimkeim · · Score: 1

    so some people don't seem to mind them

    They're just too lazy to skip them. Ads are cancer. Always.