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Tangentially, this is also a great argument in music business discussions against the finality of Spotify, Youtube and other centralized streaming platforms. People are doing just fine consuming podcast RSS feeds using players when the UX is smooth; there's no reason why that couldn't be the case for music or other verticals in general (direct artist-to-fan).

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Problem with video is still bandwidth and the fact that it is more difficult to distribute.

For podcasts you need one mp3, usually quite compressed. For video you usually need more than one source, adaptable stream quality and good seeking (because most people do not watch videos end to end but only view parts of it).

This is probably not insurmountable but I guess we need better tools for creators to abstract all of this.

This is already solved by HLS - all you'd need is a .m3u8 file in the feed. Industry insistence on DRM issues is what's preventing it from taking off, but "indies" could do it.

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