I’m thinking again about how the interoperable and open nature of podcasts continues to be stymied by many of the industry players, and not just the usual suspects.
For example, I listen to a lot of ABC content so I’d consider using ABC Listen as my main podcast app if it could *also* import RSS feeds from non-ABC pods.
Meanwhile, supposedly premium apps continue to perform dismally by treating podcasts the same as music or video and recommending episodes you’ve already heard, and other apps seem to constanly come and go without warning.
Is anyone out there really trying to understand how people actually want to consume podcasts and other non-music audio?
There are some groups working on these problems, and in particular on keeping podcasting open. The Podcast Standards Project is building out standards and advocating for open protocols across the pod ecosystem. OpenRSS helps add RSS feeds to sites that don’t have them. The Podcast Index is an open database of all podcasts (at time of writing it indexes over 4.5 million, with 95,000 shows published every few days).
These are excellent projects and all have their place. But to truly make a mark, the big platforms need to be dragged into this space. Spotify should allow import and export of podcast playlists. It should treat podcasts like podcasts and stop algorithmically intervening in your curated playlist. YouTube should clean up their feeds to remove non-podcast shows and prioritise the listener experience. And everyone involved should adopt a common set of standards for podcast analytics.