Hacker News Reader

Comment by ipsum2 | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think so? Almost all TV shows are exclusive to their platforms, and they're doing fine. What makes audio different?

View on HN

Existing podcast ecosystem is already entrenched. I'm in the process of disentangling myself from all tech monopolies and people are wiser to it now more than ever.

TV shows began on network TV. The whole point of podcasting was anyone can start one. Unlike TV shows, it's quite easy from a technical perspective to host a podcast. Audio talk shows don't have to be high bitrate.

Honestly I think stranglehold on video will similarly fade away when high speed internet is highly available everywhere.

> I'm in the process of disentangling myself from all tech monopolies and people are wiser to it now more than ever.

I don't think most people will go through the hassle of disentangling themselves from tech monopolies. What's the benefit? For most people, having everything managed by Google/Apple/Facebook is a benefit rather than a bad thing.

> The whole point of podcasting was anyone can start one.

Has this changed?

Hosting audio is a multiple orders of magnitude easier then video, which means platforms don't have as much value to add.

This completely ignores the fact that hosting costs don't really matter. If Spotify can make more money on new subscriptions than they paid some content creator for exclusivity then it's worth it to them. And if the content creator gets more money by selling their exclusivity to some platform than they got for ads then it's worth it to them too.

And if listeners don’t cancel their subscriptions in response, then Spotify bet correctly. But it’s nearly trivial to record audio of yourself talking to someone, so if a sufficient number of people want to consume the content Spotify doesn’t want to host, I’m betting they will be able to find it elsewhere by a different podcast.

They don't need to add value for the end user if they can control the scarce resource (content) by buying it up and providing more lucrative monetisation options for creators.

Their play is a hybrid of a streaming service and an adtech giant, and I imagine they're keeping their options open to see whether it pays to keep both sides of that model open or to pick one. Either way, one of the reasons I don't like what they're doing is because I can see it working.

Besides all that, there is some value to having all of your audio in one app.

Assuming enough listeners put up with it. I don’t see it lasting though, the barrier to entry is low and I bet talking to other people is a talent that many people have.

Streaming services are still significantly more frictionless than what came before it. Moving podcasts into a walled garden makes them harder to access than what we have now.

Podcasting is talk radio but born in internet form. Copying and widespread sharing is part of its DNA, much like YouTube videos.

TV didn't start out as an open standard using RSS.

It started out as syndicated broadcast media that you could subscribe to for a one time purchase of a receiver.

The point is that you couldn't publish without an FCC license, which required deep pockets. Publishing an RSS feed requires a host and a domain, which can be had today for a grand total of $70/year if one goes with the cheapest DigitalOcean VPS or under $20/year if one does a little research.

Hosting a few MP3s and a text file that can be downloaded in a few seconds is a lot cheaper and easier than a video streaming setup (or a 10-20 kilowatt broadcast transmitter).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com