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Podcasting is Not Walled (Yet) (rakhim.org)
Rakhim Davletkaliyev, a software developer, writer and podcaster, recently launched two new podcasts. One of the things he was asked by people following the launches was "but how do I subscribe, it's not on iTunes/Google Podcasts?" He writes: Podcasts are simply RSS feeds with links to media files (usually mp3s). A podcast is basically a URL. And podcast clients are special browsers. They check that URL regularly and download new episodes if the content of the URL changes (new link added). That's it, no magic, no special membership or anything else required. The technology is pretty "stupid" in a good way.
Ever since tech companies started waging war against RSS, podcast distribution became visually RSS-free. What do you do to subscribe? Easy, just search in the app! For the majority of iOS users that app is Apple Podcasts, and recently Google made their own "default client" for Android -- Google Podcasts. It looks like podcast clients are similar to web browsers and just provide a way to consume content, but the underlying listings make them very different. Corresponding services are actually isolated catalogs. When you perform a search on Apple Podcasts, you aren't searching for podcasts. You are searching for Apple-approved podcasts. And if the thing you're looking for is not there, then... well, you get nothing.
Most Podcast clients still accept RSS. Apple Podcasts, iTunes, PocketCasts, OverCast, PodcastAddict. Google Play Music doesn't say anything explicitly, but you can just put RSS URL into the search field and it works. For now. I won't be surprised if these apps gradually and silently remove this feature.
Ever since tech companies started waging war against RSS, podcast distribution became visually RSS-free. What do you do to subscribe? Easy, just search in the app! For the majority of iOS users that app is Apple Podcasts, and recently Google made their own "default client" for Android -- Google Podcasts. It looks like podcast clients are similar to web browsers and just provide a way to consume content, but the underlying listings make them very different. Corresponding services are actually isolated catalogs. When you perform a search on Apple Podcasts, you aren't searching for podcasts. You are searching for Apple-approved podcasts. And if the thing you're looking for is not there, then... well, you get nothing.
Most Podcast clients still accept RSS. Apple Podcasts, iTunes, PocketCasts, OverCast, PodcastAddict. Google Play Music doesn't say anything explicitly, but you can just put RSS URL into the search field and it works. For now. I won't be surprised if these apps gradually and silently remove this feature.
Recently, Apple, Google, and Facebook have colluded to censor views with which they disagree by removing authors from their platforms. The populist right wing in particular communicates by podcasts, and Apple and Google recently removed some, including some very popular ones, from the podcast indices that their walled-garden apps provide. TFA higlights the lengths to which Apple and Google go to make their indices seem the only avenue for surfacing content to users of their default applications, although the underlying technology is in fact open and accessible outside those indices and apps. That openness provides an avenue for resisting censorship, but the viability of that resistance relies on users understanding something about how RSS works.
In a wider context, this is also important in the overall contest between open standards like RSS and the closed approaches of centralized tech. Google, Facebook, Twitter, et al. despise RSS because it is impossible for them to monetize or censor and replicates much of their functionality. Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ are all built around the idea of a feed/wall/stream, which is basically RSS. The tech companies would love to kill off RSS and provide ad-filled, censored, feeds/walls/streams under centralized control instead of decentralized RSS feeds that anyone can publish. Hiding the RSS in podcast apps may work towards that goal.
Do you know how many walled gardens there are for podcasts? I've helped a couple people list their RSS feed and I didn't post to anywhere near this number of services. If this were part of an open web, they would simply be indexed by search engines and no manual submission would be needed. You don't have to explicitly submit your web site to Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc, so why should podcasts be any different? Sure, you can prefer manually-submitted entries. But expecting every podcast to know of every directory is insane.
A podcast client is a bit more than a web browser with RSS support. People are looking for more than that anymore in an podcast client. They want to be able to stream or download it. They want to be able to speed up / slow down playback. They want to support both audio and video podcasts. They want cross-device placement/bookmark sync. They want intelligent downloading so they don't blow their data caps (particularly with cell data). That's a bit more than just a web browser with RSS support.
But I do agree with you on the big players trying to take a chunk out of RSS podcasts and RSS in general. I talked about that in https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10677653&cid=54511965
But here is the thing, content rules. If people can't get the content that they want on big players app they want, they'll use a different app. Encourage you're content creator to stay platform agnostic. This doesn't let the draconian big players isolate content. If the big players want that content, force them to add support for open standards like RSS in their apps.
No good deed goes unpunished.
OOH OOH!!
I got it...
Podcasts on the Blockchain!!!!
YISSS!!!
Yep, just ask Alex Jones.....
I mean, I'm not a fan of his, it was a bit of a whack job channel on YouTube, but wow....he just got booted.
Strangely, however.....I've not see a lot of other high visibility channels on either side of the spectrum that were as bad if not worse than AJ get booted.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
RSS and things built on top of it like Podcasts are good for users. But the technology is bad for advertisers. If you see criticism of RSS, look closely at where it comes from. If it comes from someone trying to sell you something, take their advice with a grain of salt.
It's been said before that advertisers and ad brokers are at a disadvantage with RSS. But Web 2.0 developers that wish to sell frameworks and services are also at a big disadvantage too. You'll see self-described web experts that disregard RSS as being primitive, limited, or no longer relevant. But I have to wonder if this has more to do with such "experts" trying to compete with a free and established technology.
Still, I believe it is inevitable that RSS will die. Take Usenet newsgroups for example, that is basically dead, at least in terms of being a widely used communication hub as it once was. What replaces it? A fractured set of isolated web forums (that includes /. and Reddit). Instead of having a huge global network of message boards, we have tiny isolated communities, and even that medium is dying out. Replaced by the top post schemes of Facebook groups, Google+, and Twitter.
Why did Usenet die? There are many factors, but one of the big ones is that it's hard to get ad revenue from running a news server and easy set up on a web forum.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire