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Comment by soylentcola | Hacker News Reader

Completely beside the point, but how is a Discord live stream a "podcast"?

Have media folks just started calling any streaming audio a "podcast" now?

They call themselves NulledCast. If they operate as and refer to themselves as a podcast, what are “media folks” supposed to call it?

Am I mistaken, or is it not an accident that “podcast” rhymes with “broadcast”? I thought the whole metaphor behind the name was that these were essentially radio broadcasts except you listened to them on your iPod: podcasts. The fact that they weren’t generally live is simply due to the fact that electronic hardware and wireless internet weren’t up to the task at the time.

Now, calling live audio streams “podcasts” seems perfectly understandable and arguably even more faithful to the original idea because of the ubiquity of streaming media.

I always thought a podcast was an mp3 (or other audio file) that was delivered by subscribing to an RSS feed that told your podcatcher application when there was a new file available.

In the early days of podcasting I was listening to live streaming audio in the car and on headphones via my old Palm and PocketPC phones. I'd even run a Shoutcast station for a few years before that (but it was less portable before I had a cellular device that could run streaming audio apps).

Anyway, I was mostly just commenting on the shift in terminology as "podcast" has become ubiquitous. I still think of a podcast as a syndicated feed, initially (as you said) used as a way around the limitations of iPods and such. Live streaming audio was already a thing and had only gotten more popular. I still wouldn't call a live radio-style stream a "podcast" though.

> I always thought a podcast was an mp3 (or other audio file) that was delivered by subscribing to an RSS feed that told your podcatcher application when there was a new file available.

Indeed, and the point of RSS feeds was to get your content as nearly live as possible given technology at the time, because the whole metaphor was around replacing radio programs.

It's a "webcast".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webcast

In short, yes.

The alternative is "radio" which is even weirder

What’s wrong with calling it a livestream? It’s accurate and already in common use.

Livestream implied video

WebStream?

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