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Comment by klelatti | Hacker News Reader

Joe who?

Seriously, I think that there are a number of reasons why this won't pan out as predicted:

- There aren't really any tent-pole, must listen podcasts. They thought Joe Rogan was one but I'm hearing a lot of people have stopped listening to him on Spotify (I have).

- Spotify (and others) don't have the money to buy out the whole podcast ecosystem and many podcast makers I think would resist going Spotify exclusive.

- I like my podcast player a lot and there is no way I'm giving it up for the inferior Spotify experience.

I see podcasting as being more like YouTubing - sure there are outfits generating substantial revenue from advertising but many have more diverse revenue streams and reaching the largest audience is more important that an uplift in advertising revenue. Plus not everyone on YouTube is there for the $$$

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Rogan is fine (if dumb) light entertainment to have in the background. I haven’t listened to a single episode since the move now that it’s not on YouTube anymore. Spotify is also totally awful for podcasts as the UX is for a music player. Besides Lex now fills that hole with a lot more intelligence

I've heard Joe Rogan jokingly refered to as "Oprah for middle aged white dudes".

If only he were Oprah.

More like "Gwyneth Paltrow for bros".

Painfully accurate.

Except Gwyneth and friends are emulating Rogan’s ‘model’ and applying it to the female audience. Rogan and his style of broadcasting were around for almost a decade before Goop decided to start podcasting & make a TV show. Pretty smart on their part honestly. When I saw the Netflix show, all I could think of is ‘This is JRE for women’. Even using some of the same guests, and topics Joe had already popularized.

Rogan conducted decent interviews with Roger Penrose and Oliver Stone.

It's not about Rogan, it is about the guests. His interviews are certainly less formulaic than Charlie Rose's, except when he inserts his favorite topics (just use fast forward ...).

Sounds like something Merlin Mann might say on "Do By Friday"

Eh, Rogan normalizes hate speech in ways that if you or I were to try to do would get us fired/unfriended.

I don't think that's "fine", but it's also not really topical to the submission so I'll leave it at that.

Edit: if folks want to start a discussion about this with me, let's create an email thread about it. My email is in my profile, I'll wait until three folks mention their interest before getting started, if that works. I really didn't mean to upset or try to dodge anything, I just don't think a protracted discussion about Joe Rogan will be very interesting to most people on HN.

Sounds more like you want to raise the subject but don't want anyone to challenge you on it so you'll "leave it at that."

I'm sorry, hit me up on my email in my profile if you want to discuss more! A "Is Joe Rogan a racist?" conversation is not interesting, and this place is about hosting interesting discussions.

> A "Is Joe Rogan a racist?" conversation is not interesting, and this place is about hosting interesting discussions.

Yeah... because it's a bullshit conversation that people know is false, and any attempt to try to argue otherwise would see you utterly destroyed with facts.

Rogan and Chappelle are great friends. Rogan was friends with Patrice O'Neal. He's friends with Colion Noir and has him on the show about every six - twelve months.

For a "racist", he's doing a pretty poor job.

Man, I'd love to discuss this with you, but I really don't think it makes for good HN content. Unlike most, I do enjoy getting "destroyed with facts". Please email me!

I won't go so far as to call Rogan a racist, but it is undeniable that he platforms known racists and does little to challenge their hateful beliefs. In effect Rogan is re-platforming those rightfully cancelled from forums with even the smallest amount of decorum, allowing hateful rhetoric to spread unabated.

>Yeah... because it's a bullshit conversation that people know is false, and any attempt to try to argue otherwise would see you utterly destroyed with facts.

This is not something someone with a convincing argument says before:

>Rogan and Chappelle are great friends. Rogan was friends with Patrice O'Neal. He's friends with Colion Noir and has him on the show about every six - twelve months.

...using the same argument whites use to justify saying the N word. Racists/supremacists tend to have token black friends, typically of lesser status or means, as cover.

In the context of their relationship (comedy), Chappelle is certainly much higher status than Rogan.

That's tangential to my point and inaccurate. Rogan is worth double Chappelle while enjoying far more of the current limelight to boot. Rather, my point is that saying someone isn't racist because they're friends, at least in public, with black people is fallacious and racist itself.

I think tree-style conversations were invented so that you _can_ go off topic.

Can you give me an example of something Joe Rogan has said that you think a tech employer would fire an employee for? (Seriously asking, I don't listen to Rogan.)

People also try to ignore that Spotify did exactly what everybody thought they would do - started watering down the guests and removing so-called controversial episodes.

A big part of the Rogan show charm was the fringe guests, and his audience doesnt care the least for the kind of corporate virtue signalling Spotify is eminating.

In effect, it went from offering somewhat novel things to being plain boring - like everything else you’d expect from a Spotify podcast. I dont find Rogan particularly charismatic as a host either so why listen anymore?

Exactly this. Rogan didn't always have something or somebody interesting on the podcast. But his show had teeth, and even though it didn't go out of its way to bare them, you knew they were there.

I didn't follow him to Spotify. Podcasting is a bastion of free-speech, and one of the few open ecosystems with real scale. I don't resent him taking the deal, but losing the show wasn't enough to tempt me into a gilded cage.

Yeah I really wish there is a way to see the engagement with JRE on spotify ... on youtube it was immediately available (views count / comments / likes dislikes) ... in a sense youtube provided the end user with the content, a way to evaluate it (analytics) and ability to have a community around it (comment section).

Spotify doesn't offer any of those.. I too was a daily JRE listener and not anymore, but the good news is that I feel like I upgraded by choosing more specialized podcasts based on my interests.

Yeah, youtube was my preferred way to consume JRE. I'm not one to put on a podcast in the background, because I don't like having something I find interesting going on while I'm trying to do other stuff that requires thought, and if it's not interesting why would I put it on?

Having the interesting moments distilled into two to three 10-15 minute clips was ideal, and if I found the conversation really interesting I might try to watch the whole show for that day.

... I was under the impression they had stopped doing that, but I just checked and there are a lot of clips showing on PowerfulJRE, so maybe they just screwed up their recommendation rating? I just know that when they went to spotify I stopped getting them recommended to me, but there's been a few the last couple weeks now.

Joe Rogan will occasionally have guests that attract people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in common JRE topics. In my case, it was podcasts with Billy Corgan and Shirley Manson (of Smashing Pumpkins and Garbage, respectively).

I enjoyed those episodes a lot, plus a few he has with comedians I find funny. But it wasn't enough to make me subscribe. I doubt there is any podcast that I consider indispensable enough to subscribe.

The only podcasts I listen religiously are the intelligence by the economist and revolutions by Mike Duncan. I can listen to the intelligence via the economist app and Revolutions is ending this year (and I get it through the standard podcast app on iOS.)

The Intelligence is available as a regular old podcast feed too - all Economist podcasts are.

The Economist's iOS app means I have started listening to their podcast many many many times without wanting to. Particularly irritated when browsing in bed next to a sleeping wife.

I have a few I've considered indispensable that have shifted over time. Reply All is consistently good (but I'm a couple months behind at this point, less podcast time). Dan Carlin's Hardcore History is a treat when it comes out, but that's like every 4-6 months usually. This is only a test from tested.com is good, and even though it's weekly it's topical enough I can skip a week or two and not feel like I need to go back and listen. My most recent favorite is Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod, which perfectly encapsulates that feeling I used to get when I sat down with a good friend and we started talking about/ranting about some interesting thing one of us did a deep dive on recently.

Not that you actually asked. ;)

spoiler alert: reply all is unfortunately dead

Well, that's sad. :/

> My most recent favorite is Brad & Will Made a Tech Pod, which perfectly encapsulates that feeling I used to get when I sat down with a good friend and we started talking about/ranting about some interesting thing one of us did a deep dive on recently.

You might enjoy Grumpy Old Geeks. I’ve been listening to the show for a couple of years. I recommend checking them out.

I don't follow Joe Rogan or really very many podcasts, and the ones I do are fairly topical. I'm not going to go relisten to old episodes the same way I would rewatch The Office. It really shifts the focus to creators and away from the IP. I don't think that's really a set in stone thing though, it's just the nature of the type of audio content that's popular right now.

I'll admit I'm a podcast novice, but what player are you using and what does it offer beyond Spotify? I find, download, and play podcasts through Spotify without issues, and the few features I need (speed adjustment, offline access, and show notes/links) are all available on Spotify.

If there is a better way to listen, I'd love to hear about it.

I use Pocket Casts. I just like it a lot, and I don't want to switch because it does everything I need. Spotify seems like it wouldn't be as configurable, but I haven't even felt the need to check.

Plus, I don't like a monoculture.

>I just like it a lot, and I don't want to switch because it does everything I need. Spotify seems like it wouldn't be as configurable

Maybe I'm missing out on part of the experience. What else is there to do with a podcast other than download/stream and listen?

- Thanks for all the tips. I don't listen to a ton of podcasts but I'll give it a shot.

Chapter support is a nice feature when it's available. There are some podcasts that I listen to straight through. I skip around others.

Not the parent commenter, but there's a lot of features I like out of Pocket Casts that Spotify doesn't do as well.

- Queuing/auto-queuing to a next-up playlist (with features like add to start or add to end)

- Faster playback (e.g. listening at 2x speed)

- Alerts when new episodes drop to a given feed

It's very configurable and works well.

Also, I just dislike having to abandon my music queue when I listen to a podcast on Spotify. It's nice to have music playing at home, pause it, go for a walk listening to a podcast, finish the walk, then resume the same song/playlist at home.

Well, why are we not coding on laptops from 1994?

The user interface can be wildly different.

Pocket casts changed recently but oh how I lived the old ui. Spotify had nothing on it.

Haven't had a reason to download Spotify since even though I haven't liked all the changes in the new pocket casts.

I believe (though I'm not sure) that AntennaPod is closer to the old Pocket Casts UI (but not as polished):

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.danoeh.antennapod/

Your snarky response isn't helpful. You've only said "it's different" and dismissed Spotify while also not giving any reasons why you dislike it.

I don't dislike it. I'm happy with my podcast player and don't want two of them since I want to keep using the one with the interface I like.

Other things than the pure content matter. It's not irrelevant.

Playback speed, how many episodes to download on each podcast (some I listen to often, some rarely), what do with them when done, when to go to the next episode automatically, there's a lot. And I want these configurable per-podcast.

Some apps also have the ability to compress silent gaps in audio which can save a lot of time over time. It may not work if you’re listening to things that need ‘comedic timing’ but otherwise it’s entirely seamless.

I’ve been using Apple’s app recently and its the one thing I quite miss.

Also configurable speed controls + skipping whitespace + easier to skip ads (Spotify podcasts break out the ads into their own streams so you can't skip them all in one go, though you can skip them individually).

Other nice features I haven’t seen mentioned

- sort by most liked - save clips

Favoriting episodes, bookmarks, auto-queues, prioritizing podcasts, downloading episodes for archival purposes, playback history, list of all episodes in progress, stripping empty audio, crazy amount of configurability, and an interface that isn't terrible. I'm sure there are a bunch of other features I'm forgetting.

I've tried Spotify. It's not a podcast player. It's an audio player with none of the conveniences of a modern podcast player. If all you want to do is listen to podcasts, I'm sure it's fine, but it's not in any way sufficient for my needs. At this point, Podcast Addict is the only app out there that I can stand to use.

You're not missing out on anything. The Pocket Casts UI is impenetrable and I can never remember how to tell which podcasts are downloaded, which I've listened to, etc. There's some overlap with the "archive" feature that is unintuitive.

I tweeted at the Pocketcasts team to recommend adding a feature that I would find useful (I think it was excluding "the" from alphabetised list of podcasts since it made titles clump together under "T"). They responded quickly and implemented it pretty soon afterwards. I was impressed.

I love the web player interface (although have found problems using a VPN) but the Android app has been a bit tricky to use, having to navigate to filters to find episodes I've downloaded.

Don't know about the competition, but PocketCasts has a lot of options in the share feature I use. Share podcast, share episode, share episode at this point. I'll often times send a share text saying "listen to the next 3 minutes".

I would love to support Pocket Casts, but I don't want to pay another subscription (Pocket Casts plus appears to be $1/mo). Do you know if there's any way to just pay $12 for Plus forever or something like that? Or another podcast app that has that kind of one-time purchase?

I use Overcast (https://overcast.fm/) which I believe has a one-time purchase fee to remove ads. It also has pretty nice features such as audio boost and silence trimming.

Is there a feature you want out of the paid subscription, or do you just want to support them? The subscription goes towards enabling features which have an ongoing cost (sync of files and listening state across devices so you can listen on desktop where you left off on mobile). I don't think they want to offer a one time fee for what is an indefinite period of cost.

AFAIK most features other than that are still fully supported in the free version of the app without ads though. So if you don't want any of those features, they're probably better supported by you recommending them to others than giving them a few dollars.

Yeah, I mostly just wanted to toss them a few bucks since they've created an app that I really love. That's a good point, though -- I've recommended Pocket Casts to a lot of folks at this point, and pushed several off of listening to podcasts on Spotify so I'm doing my part to contribute in small ways.

I use Podbean coupled with Pocket Casts. They do everything I need. These apps are really useful.

Also, there are only so many things that you expect from a Podcast app-

- Does not have ads. (Some banner ads are okay) - Offers download in external storage - Has bookmarking capabilities - Offers all the titles I listen to - Saves data associated with an email address

There. Simple. Don't want anything more.

Castro on iOS. It uses an inbox triage model that lets me subscribe to a lot of podcasts and keep up with what they’re doing, without cluttering my queue or inducing decision fatigue. It has more granular (per-podcast) controls for smart speed, silence skipping, voice leveling, skipping intros and automatic triage than Spotify. It also lets me upload custom audio and subscribe to custom/private feeds. Support for scripting listening and feed management with iOS shortcuts is above a useful threshold.

Prior to Castro, I used Overcast and Pocket Casts, which have similar features.

I’m sure Spotify is the future but these third party clients are great for heavy listeners who want more control.

I use PocketCasts (on iOS) and I'm happy enough to pay for a subscription (extra benefits are marginal though).

It's less about features, I think, and more about the overall experience. It's probably quite personal too, but in no particular order:

- Smoother and more responsive UI

- Less cluttered and more dense UI eg visual overview of all my subscriptions

- Silence trimming

- Sharing from a given place in a podcast

I do use Spotify for music though so I'm not completely anti the Spotify experience. In fairness to the Spotify designers I do think that they have a more difficult job in integrating podcasts into an app that is mainly a music player.

I use it on Android and also quite happy with it after years of use.

Another user of PocketCasts (Android and Windows).

In addition to the above, I make use of

- podcast specific auto download, retention, and playback settings

- clean Android Auto integration. When I switch from Pandora to PocketCasts, it's quite clear what is happening. It intelligently handles pausing/resuming playback while notifications are playing. Even rewinding a little if it's been a bit since you listened.

- Progress sync, so I can pickup where I was on different versions of the app. (Desktop/Web/Android)

- Fast refresh of feeds. Your phone asks their server for the status rather than calling each server individually. This was a bigger issue back in the day.

Spotify still doesn't allow the user to add an RSS feed in the app, right? Until they support that it makes no sense to use as my main podcast app because the (admittedly few) podcasts I listen to are mostly either too behind the times to be on Spotify or I pay for their Patreon and need to be able to use the subscriber feed. I use AntennaPod on Android and the built-in Podcasts app on iOS.

Overcast. It has a “smart speed” feature that cuts out breaks and pauses in a way that’s almost unnoticeable but will save/gain you hundreds of hours. And audio clip sharing and great leveling in addition to privacy features.

https://overcast.fm/

There’s numerous small developers out there putting in much more care than Spotify.

Also a huge fan of Overcast. I just looked and it's saved me an extra "211 hours beyond speed adjustments alone".

I've been using iCatcher on ios for years now. It has all the things you mention but also a nice set of sorting logic to choose from as well as other per-podcast options like prioritization and number of episodes to download/display etc.

Lex Fridman's podcast is much better if you want something more intellectual.

I stopped listening to rogan after spotify but he did a series of JRE MMA including one with GSP, those made me listen to spotify.

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