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Google Has A New Podcast App. It Also Hopes To Diversify Podcasting. (buzzfeed.com)

Posted by msmash on from the marching-forward dept.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Google now has its own podcast app called, well, Google Podcasts, and if you have an Android phone, you can head over to the Play Store and get it right now. Google Podcasts does most things you would expect a podcast app to do. It lets you subscribe to and download podcasts; it learns from your listening history and suggests new ones you might like; and, if you're a podfaster, it lets you speed shows up. Most of these have been things you can already do right from within the Google app on your Android phone -- but now you get a shiny new app to do it with. For Google, the app represents an ambitious goal: to double worldwide podcast listenership. [...] Google is working with an independent global advisory board and industry experts to bring in more creators from underrepresented backgrounds such as women, people of color, and people from other countries into podcasting. Other players in the space such as Spotify and WNYC have already made efforts to spotlight these voices in the podcasting ecosystem. As part of this new program, Google will create curriculums to teach people podcasting basics, develop training programs, and also lower barriers to entry by helping out with equipment like microphones. Details about the program and specific plans to diversify outreach were not yet available. Google says it currently has no plans to release the podcast app to Apple's App Store.

16 of 105 comments (clear)

  1. When I hear the word "diversity" ... by quenda · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I reach for my Jordan Peterson podcast.

    1. Re:When I hear the word "diversity" ... by ichimunki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      When I hear the words "diversity" and "podcast" in the same sentence, all I think of is help for hard of hearing and deaf people getting access to audio-only material. So I'm mostly curious in what they're doing around automated transcription.

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    2. Re:When I hear the word "diversity" ... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2

      When I hear the words "diversity" and "podcast" in the same sentence, all I think of is help for hard of hearing and deaf people getting access to audio-only material. So I'm mostly curious in what they're doing around automated transcription.

      Apparently their goal is make sure that information from non white males will now also be inaccessible ...

  2. Important note by Kohath · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not "improve" podcasting, it's "diversify" podcasting.

    If you want things to be better, you need to turn away from people who don't care about things being better.

    1. Re:Important note by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To Google (or the subset of the company in charge of this) those words are synonymous. They apparently seem to believe that the color of a person's skin is more important than the content their podcast.

      I doubt this will have much of an effect in the grand scheme of things. You can't sell a product that no one in the market wants to buy. If there were more demand for the things that Google were trying to push, people would naturally move to fill in that demand and Google would need to do very little beyond making sure that they weren't damaging the market through their own actions. At most they might identify and help to address a supply side issue, but that assumes that one must exist to be solved.

      I also think that most of these efforts are halfhearted at best anyways as it isn't really about solving problems, but having the appearance of doing so in order to appear virtuous. It's essentially just another mega-church that neither feeds nor clothes the homeless. Perpetual failure to remove the problem simply means you can continue to proselytize about it ad infinitum.

    2. Re:Important note by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Insightful

      They apparently seem to believe that the color of a person's skin is more important than the content their podcast.

      . . . a rather amusing fail on Google's part:

      I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

      It seems that this diversity obsession is doing exactly what Dr. King wanted to eliminate.

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    3. Re:Important note by Kohath · · Score: 2

      Anyone can podcast. There are zero barriers to entry.

      So, by your definition, diversity is not a synonym to improvement in podcasting.

  3. Yeah forced "diversity" by ackkamoto · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Can I just listen to what I want without the big Google diversity d$ck slapping me in the face all the time. I don't fucking care about your politics.

  4. No thanks. by RyanFenton · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'll stick with PocketCasts.

    Not because I don't think Google can make a better product technologically - but because I don't want the software to suddenly change its policies and randomly do something I don't want because it has a chance of making Google some money.

    I don't want to be listening to a carefully researched discussion touching on the tragedies of Nazi Germany, the suddenly have the next MP3 be Glenn Beck by association - then have all my adverts everywhere suddenly be pro-Trump propaganda.

    Google is legitimately good for searching for things (Google scholar is great!), but living in a nation with 40+% Trump supporters has completely messed up the associations and logic behind targeted advertising - it's kind of made it poisonous along with the nation at large.

    Ryan Fenton

  5. it does even more by ooloorie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google Podcasts does most things you would expect a podcast app to do.

    And it no doubt censors content that Google management, their political cronies, or their specially trained AI disapprove of.

    Thanks, but no thanks.

  6. So an app now needs by AHuxley · · Score: 3, Insightful

    an AI, global advisory board, industry experts to ensure diversity.
    Remember when programs just had to do something well.

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    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  7. Privacy hog app by schure · · Score: 2

    Turns out in order to subscribe to a podcast I have to allow Google to store all my App and Web Activity. BS.

  8. Re:how is this still a thing? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

    its 2018. podcasting is so 90s. jesus.

    Radio is so early 20th century, how is it still a thing? jesus.
    Cars are so late 19th century, how are they still a thing? mohammed.
    The US is so 18th century, how is it still a thing? budda.
    Bread is so 4000 years ago, how is it still a thing? bael.

    --
    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  9. That doesn't sound very nice to me by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    I don't think an app could do a really good job of curating podcasts, and also help you create them... those seem like two very different apps to me.

    What does seem more useful is a set of apps, one for listening, one for creation, where you can basically "beta test" your podcast quickly in the listening app as if it were a published podcast, so you'd get exactly the experience your listeners will have before you publish.

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    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  10. Re:"Diversify podcasting" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey, some of them may be in a situation similar to mine. We want to make a podcast, but are too lazy.

  11. Podcasts don't need diversifying. by pecosdave · · Score: 2

    By the very nature of podcasts they are open and available to literally anybody who wants to make one. The only barriers to entry are very basic technological ones and bandwidth to upload it with. I could literally make a reasonable podcasts that I could upload to the modern web on a Pentium 75 using no hardware components made after 1998 and I might even be able to get away with audio codecs from that era as well. I remember playing with MP3 for the first time in 1998, so that would work. If I wanted I could even upload that 1998 tech MP3 with an analog modem from the era, the server I uploaded it to would do all of the distribution work.

    My point:

    Why are we trying to arm-twist people who don't want to make podcasts into podcasting? I see it like I see the modern push for women in STEM - clubbing them over the head and trying to drag them into learning and doing things they're not interested in.

    I've noticed that women stereo typically prefer something other than a sit in a chair and make a radio-style podcast format. Diamond and Silk are the first examples that spring into my mind. They produce lots of regular content, and it's their own style of commentary, but they tend to do video based content. Julie Borowski, again, lots of content, almost all video, and very high-quality self edited videos at that.

    Instead of trying to force these very talented square pegs into round holes why don't they develop a new type of app that appeals to the way women commonly like to send out their message - in video?

    I've covered women - yes I'm hetero white male giving commentary on what I've observed - rocks are to the right torches are to the left and pitchforks are available at the tractor supply store two blocks away. As for minorities - diversifying that way - I have no real input. If they're culturally American I don't consider them much different that I see myself or my friends or family. If they're culturally something else - well once again - Google is trying to claw their way into other cultures and beat the idea of making podcasts into their heads if their culture doesn't embrace it. Just make the tools available, offer help when asked, and continue to make the tools easier to use to increase accessibility on that front. You know, maybe try to invent something other than the modern podcast to appeal to people who don't like to podcast.

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