Adam Curry launches a new, open podcast directory
podnews.net
podnews.net
ETA: was his the venture backed startup that hired Scoble until they ran out of money or was that something else
Edit 2: the Scoble podcast VC thing was different. But it too went up in flames in spectacular Web 2.0 fashion.
Not sure how people this disconnected with the rest of the world are able to create an "open podcast directory".
Pretty much seams like there is a platform wars going on when it comes to podcast. Looking what youtube did to video content as a platform I think companies like Spotify (Gimlit) smell blood when it comes to podcasting. Think that would be a shame for that industry, podcasting collectives like Radiotopia are awesome because of that, they have to lean on quality and content. Not on some fancy algorithm that tries to keep you engaged as long as possible. Looking at the content he creates, seems like the complete opposite.
What made podcasts awesome was that the platform was fairly neutral (rss feed). Yes you have Apple podcasts, but I don't know anyone that really likes podcasts and still uses that app.
I've requested a feature and reported a bug via their Slack. I'm hopeful they'll get added and fixed, respectively.
I still don't have a way to easily binge on some large archives. Like History of Philosophy without any Gaps. https://historyofphilosophy.net
And Malcolm Gladwell's Revisionist History doesn't sort correctly in any podcast client I've tried, making it even harder to binge.
What I really want is a NetNewsWire (RSS client) that can play audio (directly).
I also want client-side metrics and listening history. To help me remember when I heard something, better determine if I'm actually listening to misc content, etc.
It's puzzling how no one has done this yet:
- play podcasts in chronological order, keeping x of them downloaded and getting the next one when one is finished.
I could never quite master Overcast's playlists and smart playlists, but did love its exceptional polish and just how tiny and privacy focused the app is.
I wish I could get the best parts of both those apps.
"Indie self hosted podcasts" are still predominantly listed in the Apple Podcasts Directory.
Been using it for years because it gives pretty fine grain controls over streaming vs downloading the entries, how many entries to maintain, how often to check, etc.
Biggest turnoff for me was the "private jokes" or terminology that seemed to intentionally create a barrier to understanding without investing a lot of time to learn their language. Like being the newcomer to a group of people who have been hanging out for years.
What I did appreciate was the podcast notes which were like a full-fledged bibliography of every article discussed. Including the text of the articles.
As an example of what I would call mocking conspiracy theories, they used a "rain stick" and claimed to have accidentally caused floods and storms. It was pretty clear they didn't actually believe in rain sticks, but were having fun and kind of mocking such beliefs because it was all so over the top. But I could see someone taking their words literally.
I haven't listened since Obama ran against McCain, it's entirely possible they've changed their MO since then. However much like the question if Dovak really thinks Apple should cancel the iPhone or if he's just seeking attention, I just fine constant bad takes uninteresting and annoying. It's one of the reasons why I stopped listening to Rogan.
As someone here put it aptly, these days journalism is paywalled while bullshit is free.
For better or worse, Apple has been the defacto podcast directory for almost every podcasting app for over 15 years. In the aughts, a number of startups tried to take on that space (notably Odeo, which incubated and then pivoted into Twitter) and all of them failed. Apple has been largely an absentee steward, which has worked out well for podcasting. It wasn’t until Google decided to take podcasts seriously about five years ago and launched its own podcast directory. Spotify’s podcast directory started about five years ago too, though took longer to build momentum.
All three are largely copies of one another — although Spotify has exclusives in its directory that can only be played in its app — and most major podcasts choose to submit their RSS feed to those directories, with some also choosing to share with other services (Stitcher, Luminary, etc.) that can do some fucked up stuff with the audio. It’s all a game of reach for a podcast publisher, unless you choose you don’t want Luminary or Stitcher to insert their own ads into your content — or you have an exclusive with some service or another.
So now there is ostensibly yet another podcast directory, except it can’t offer a good value prop for existing except that it is “open” — which sounds good if you’re Alex Jones or you make content that has been kicked out of the other directories — but will realistically impact only a small number of podcasters.
The target audience, I assume is podcatching apps. Right now, most of them scrape the Apple or Google podcasts directory to save the insanity of trying to maintain their own directory.
So what value is there for this “open” directory to someone who has a podcatching app? Well, nothing unless there is a critical mass of podcasts submitted. Moreover, the service says it’s free, but is also asking for donations, which makes me worry about the viability of the index longterm. Given how difficult the market is for creating a third-party podcasting client when Google, Apple, and Spotify exist with their own apps and established indies (Overcast), I would strongly discourage anyone from building their own podcatcher as anything more than a hobby project.
So what’s the point? Podcasters will still have to submit to the major indexes anyway and podcatchers or client apps already have enough problems without having to worry about a little-used alternative that doesn’t have a business plan associated with it.
I’m all for open and I’m not mad this exists — but I certainly wouldn’t build my app off its API.
I only say that because I saw him on Rogan, and there was some odd tap dancing going on, imo. There were a few topics, including the donations and business model, where he seemed to just be oblivious. 3rd parties handling of the donations and his 'I don't know/I'm not involved' kind of aloofness. It came across strange to me; avoidant, I guess.
Because simply having another directory in existence and requesting people submit their feed to it isn’t going to be easy. And if the index doesn’t have the content, it is useless, regardless of its mission.
Back in the day, you'd just publish an RSS feed on your website with media content and then the users could subscribe to that. That's all a podcast used to be: an rss feed with links to (typically) mp3 or mp4 files. That still works; though many popular podcast apps insist on their own walled garden as the only source of truth.
A number of other apps (including Pocketcasts and Rhythmbox on Linux) scrape the iTunes directory for podcast feeds. So getting your podcast in iTunes is reaching much more than 15% of the market. Purely anecdotally from people I've spoken with and podcasts I listen to, Apple is their largest source of subs.
"In late 2005 Curry was caught making anonymous edits to the Podcast Wikipedia page, deleting several sections concerning contributions made by fellow podcasting pioneers, Kevin Marks and Stephen Downes, while adding material that emphasized his own involvement with the development of the medium."
Edit: the entry goes on to quote Curry in a context where he admits performing the indicated edits.
Unfortunately/fortunately? I'd pretty much not tracked him for 15+ years, so had forgotten what a sleazy Bagshot crazy he's become. Sad.
This is the first I'm hearing of it. What are have Apple been doing to their index?
Anything not distributed will be used as a locus of control. The justification for the action is immaterial. The problem is that the action is possible at all.
Separating the definitive index of podcasts from a corporate entity allows corporations to save face with their shareholders without removing discoverability for content creators who are considered not to be brand-safe.
Free speech won't and doesn't survive contact with the human race without an effective defence, and history shows merely counting on people to use more free speech leaves free speech and democracy open to coordinated brute force attacks.
So is the great firewall of China.
Russia chills speech with assassinations.
Nearly all your examples are proving the opposite of your point.
The point is that merely thinking saying free speech should be free is not enough. As you well illustrate, the debate on what exactly free speech is means we need to define what falls outside of it very clearly.
This is ahistorical. The only "censorship," they faced before they were granted power were in response to an attempted coup. They were radicalized prior to any censorship.
There's just something that doesn't sit right with me about indicating that censorship lead to a radicalization of Nazis. Violent anti-Semitism has eternally been a problem in Europe and both Austrian and German nationalist parties were entrenched in such conspiracy. It was always a violent movement.
It’s been shown that fake information travels farther and faster than accurate information.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/false-news-travels-6-ti...
My grandfather used to tell me stories about his time speechifying the Nazis in Europe. Thank goodness Hitler was receptive to logical, well-sourced arguments.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
I totally against allowing hate speech to be tolerated for this matter. Hitler was able to grow his power (and promoted hatred) while speech was still free. Once he had enough power, he reduced the freedom of speech. This is a counter example of how the paradox is real and hate is not necessarily overcome with more freedom.
Fighting Apples dominance in podcasting control has to be sympathetic to marxists like you?
Knowing yourself is the first step. Thanks for the heads up.
Not very familiar with the guy but have heard him on other podcasts before, and did not expect there to be such widespread distaste for him here. Can you help sort me & others out?
They didn't seem to care that much about right-wing media doing exactly the same during all of Obama's presidency. In fact, they regularly would regurgitate their talking points and promoted ridiculous conspiracy theories, including Birtherism.
> They don't do this because they like or want to defend Trump, they do it because they want to point out the dishonesty in a lot of what passes for journalism these days.
Then you would expect them to cover such dishonest media outlets as OANN, Fox News, The Blaze and Breitbart, right? And yet they've probably spent more time covering a single show (The View) than they have spent covering the full programming of all those outlets.
They can claim they deconstruct media all they want, but they can't claim they have 'no agenda'.
They defend Trump at every turn and only hold his feet to the fire for things like “Tweeting too much.” You need only look to the subreddit for the show to see those that fell off over the years owing to their alt right turn. Let’s not pretend this is some accusation you’ve never heard before.
As the other replier said, they constantly and consistently repeated the Obama birtherism nonsense. Now they defend Trump. There is a throughline there, you just don’t want to see it.
Or, are you under the impression that the media is truly independent and always tells the full truth in an unbiased manner, that no alternative media organization has ever legitimately exposed even a single mainstream narrative that was less than truthful?
How you can determine what I am or am not conflating based on my statement about a single media property and the guy behind it is beyond me.
We get it. You’re a fan. You don’t want to be a fan of an alt right guy. That’s your conundrum to work out, not mine.
I was just asking, as there are people that truly seem to believe the "mainstream" media is indeed truthful. Some of my relatives, for example.
Some people think that this means they're "alt right", but all that means is that they don't know what "alt right" actually is at all. Both Curry and Dvorak are very classically liberal people, American individualists or perhaps libertarians, which is a totally different political theory than fascism. Of course, most people have no idea what "fascism" is, which is why they feel comfortable calling Totalitarian Liberalism fascism as though there were no differences.
Beyond that, and returning to the actual subject at hand, there is very little "deconstruction" -- to the extent that is a thing, in the show. Perhaps in the early days. It has long since devolved in to a Trump apologist show, regurgitating Fox News and Breitbart talking points. You need only look to see where else Curry has appeared.
The alt-right is basically fascism, no? I don't mean in the normal online accusatory fashion, I mean in the "literally fans of Mussolini" fashion.
Or maybe we mean two different groups of people? I'm thinking of the folks involved with Charlottesville, etc. as opposed to the "alt lite" which is Ben Shapiro / Sargon / Cernovich and their ilk, who are distinct in the sense that they ostensibly disavow racism etc. and are more classical liberalists.
> , there is very little "deconstruction" -- to the extent that is a thing, in the show
That's a matter of opinion, I guess? I agree it has devolved since 2016, but there's still the occasional gem in there.
No Agenda does encourage you to think about the news in a more nuanced way. But it deliberately supresses nuance in how it discusses the people in the news. Most of the people they discuss are not given any benefit of the doubt ever. That is not enlightening at all.
Ultimately I think there style has far more to do with feeding the community and generating donations than anything political.
The 'purely media deconstruction' script was adopted when a Republican they liked became president. Suddenly the show became exclusively about criticizing the media's coverage of the Trump administration and all criticism of government was dropped or became about 'optics'.
Someone with a cynical streak would conclude that they always had an agenda.
Alt right is a term coined by Richard Spencer, who advocates for a white ethno state. Can you please post a link of Adam Curry advocating for this or holding similar positions?
EDIT: I am aware HN etiquette is not to complain about downvotes, but it does seem very old that asking for evidence of a very serious accusation is downvoted. For those unfamiliar with the term - Wikipedia (which is generally considered left wing) states:
> Groups which have been identified as alt-right also espouse white nationalism, white supremacism, white separatism, right-wing populism, tight immigration restrictions, racism, anti-communism, anti-Zionism, holocaust denial, xenophobia, antisemitism, antifeminism, homophobia, and islamophobia.
If you have evidence of Curry holding the more extreme positions in that list (ie, excluding anti communism etc) that would be relevant too.