It's curious this article doesn't even mention iTunes; as far as I know, that's the undisputed champion of podcast discovery and distribution, isn't it? Can podcasts afford to leave it to become Spotify exclusives?
I really hope this fails though. One of the great things about podcasts is the open RSS based ecosystem. I think current listeners might be reluctant to move away from that. What scares me is that new listeners could come to spotify and not realize it is weird for podcasts.
The only real issue RSS has is that ads have to be baked in. Sadly I don't know if we could have an open system with personalized ads.
Plus, of course, dynamic ad lengths completely break the ability to share timestamps for podcasts -- no "you should really listen to the bit starting at 17:52"...
Who wants personalized ads? When you watch the Superbowl, or flip through a People magazine, or look around the terminal while waiting for the train - does the lack of personalized ads seem like a problem?
I can't think of anything that personalized ads have ever made better.
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The average content producer (like every one who isn't already popular) doesn't get to flick a switch between "general ads" and "personalized ads".
They get to choose between no ads (because they are too small to attract private ads) and the ability to make money. Look at Adsense or Youtube.
For example, 90%+ of Youtube creators couldn't negotiate an ad deal like Leo Laporte because they are too small. Generalized ad services like Adsense/Youtube create income for the 90%, and personalization boosts that income allowing more people to produce more content.
They've already figured out how to do this. I download the Waypoint podcast (which is part of the Vice Media family) via old-school RSS feed, and the most recent episode I downloaded had a pre-roll ad which specifically called out the city that I live in.
I'm not a fan of podcasts getting personalized ads. I'm disappointed about Anchor being acquired here because they've introduced a way for smaller podcasters to get ads for their podcasts (that they can read themselves!) without going the personalized route.
Me, too. I hope so for two reasons:
1. I want to use my app of choice for listening to pods. I hated the Spotify app when I had a family plan with them.
2. I stopped my family plan because of their horrible, terrible, infuriating support. I was able to simply demonstrate a bug that they've know about for a year, that could be fixed with 5 lines of Java, and they gave me the runaround for days, completely wasting my time. The problem was this: when you reboot Android 9 and have your music on an SD card, it loses track of the SD card because the service starts while Android is checking the SD card, and the Spotify service can't see the SD card then, so it assumes it's gone and switches you to internal storage. Since I had 1500 songs downloaded to my SD card, it then starts to download those 1500 songs again, to my internal storage, which it fills up and causes problems for my phone.
I vow to never pay Spotify another cent.
I’ve had a similar problem on my old phone (running 4.4 Kit Kat). It doesn’t even need to reboot to lose track of the SD card. It happens randomly (seems more likely when the phone is charging) and it’s infuriating when it does – but it’s seldom enough that I’ve learned to live with it. Fair play for making an attempt to get the bug fixed. In my case, I figured Spotify probably wouldn’t support such an old OS.
> Meanwhile Apple, which does have the users thanks to the dominance of the iOS Podcast app, [0] has shown little inclination of being that centralized player. I wrote about the company’s opportunities in the space two years ago [1], but despite the shift in strategy to services [2] nothing has changed.
[0] > iTunes is very important to podcasting, but it is only a directory of podcasts that are hosted elsewhere; that means it is not a means to collect user data
[1] https://stratechery.com/2017/podcasts-analytics-and-centrali...
[2] https://stratechery.com/2019/apple-earnings-apple-the-servic...
I think you might be an Apple user who doesn't realize that the majority of all device users don't own Apple devices, so for Apple to be the champion of anything (except profit per user) is a bit of a mathematical impossibility.
It's not a mathematical impossibility because, as far as I know, podcast listeners are still quite a small number. Plus, you forgot iPod owners (I know a few Android users who carry an iPod when exercising).
I also wouldn’t underestimate the possibility that there is some correlation between enjoying the podcast format and Appple products. This American Life, as the prototypical podcast, is really what happens if you leave Jony Ive in a locked room with only a microphone and a dwindling supply of coffee.
The power and reach of the default install of Apple Podcasts is hard to ignore. (which I don't believe most Android phones have).
I run a site for us university students and it's roughly a 90%/10% split for ios/android.
Basically you're ignoring conditional probability.
the good thing about podcasts is that they seem significantly more diversified. On my podcast app I listen to many podcasts that have only a thousand subscribers or so and don't really rely on a lot of funding.
I have a hard time imagining that any of those is going to be sucked into some exclusive deal with spotify.
There's a lot more space for quality content that isn't commercialised in the podcast space, because lots of podcasting isn't a main source of income for the producer.