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

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.

Comments

When I hear the word "diversity" ...

[quenda]

I reach for my Jordan Peterson podcast.

Re:When I hear the word "diversity" ...

[ichimunki]

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.

Important note

[Kohath]

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.

Re:Important note

[alvinrod]

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.

Re:Important note

[PolygamousRanchKid]

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.

Yeah forced "diversity"

[ackkamoto]

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.

No thanks.

[RyanFenton]

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

it does even more

[ooloorie]

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.

So an app now needs

[AHuxley]

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

Re:how is this still a thing?

[Oswald McWeany]

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.