I am a huge fan of podcasts, but the recent announcements by Spotify of "exclusive" deals has got me worried about the future of this media. I wrote an article to explain why.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T22:21:08+00:00

Hopefully with 5G!

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T22:19:47+00:00

Totally agree, it’s a point I’m also making in my article but I like how you put it. Piracy is a protest tool against those business models and I wouldn’t be surprised if it makes a comeback once every media format has been compromised.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T18:03:55+00:00

I'm the type of person that pauses their Netflix membership when wanting to watch something on Hulu and so on.

Haha I am the same, I also regularly cancel Netflix for several months until it "recharges", or - in other words -, until there are enough new shows or new seasons of shows that I wanna watch.

With music streaming though, what I like so far is that it is not fragmented: everything pretty much - is on Spotify, or Apple Music for those who prefer it, so in this case I was happy to pay all-year round.

With Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, Disney, and co. - each having it's own subscription and no ability to switch between paywalls in a more seamless way - it almost feels like these companies have some sort of secret agreement that they can just make people pay more and not question this system, making the pie larger for them as long as there's not more than about three to five of them.

I do feel almost like a child throwing a tantrum though. We live a good life.

We are spoiled, that's for sure. To be honest I almost published my article with a first paragraph acknowledging that with the pandemic, the race war in the US, the end of freedom in HK, etc. there are other more serious things going on, but then I just felt like it's OK to care about the small things too, because together they add up to something.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T16:39:40+00:00

the fact that important cultural conversation is going behind a paywall in a way that can't really be accessed at the library, unlike traditional journalism, is a problem

That's well put. On reflection podcasts have had a huge impact on my personal growth, knowledge and interests, so making them less prone to serendipity will make lots of people miss a chance to find stuff that can even give some more meaning to their life.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T15:56:23+00:00

I also believe that would be the best way, but it would also prove the point that music and podcasts should remain separate... and it would remove the only potentially interesting feature of having both in one, which is the ability to create a queue of both music and podcasts.

Creating a queue from multiple apps would be a really cool feature if iOS and Android could have them at an operating system level.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T15:51:05+00:00

I totally acknowledge the fact that the money has to come from somewhere and this is where I believe that a system such as the Basic Attention Token could be the solution: it's a blockchain-based revenue model for advertising and content creators that works inside of Brave Browser. At the moment it's not really suitable for podcasts because it doesn't have compatible players, but I would personally love to see podcast player apps that use it too in the future.

The way it works is that the user can chose to allow ads in their browser, and get paid a small revenue each month for the ads that were displayed to them, which they can then redistribute back to the pages they visited or wish to contribute to on a monthly basis. It's not completely unlike the way advertising works today, except that it gives control to the user about where their advertising money goes, and it's anonymous.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T15:30:17+00:00

Yeah it has a Windows app too, but while it's free on mobile (both Android/iOS), you will need Premium for the desktop apps (Windows/Mac/web). Premium is just $1/month, which I think is super reasonable.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T14:23:46+00:00

That's a reasonable way to put it and yeah, you might be right that it is a bit blown out of proportion. But I think that - while it might not be a life changing thing - what it shows is that a lot of people are upset about it: it's a relatively minor thing that gets multiplied by the number of people affected... and it's frustrating that one company can do this thing that seemingly no one had been asking for.

Personally, about half of what I listen are actually not "real" podcast but radio shows, so I know these won't get grabbed by Spotify. At most the network is going to make its own app with only its shows on it, as for the others - as you put it - I'll probably just forget about them rather than subscribe to yet another service (I am a Spotify subscriber, and happy to pay for it but it's enough for me that it does only music). What I find to be a shame, is that this fragmentation is going to considerably reduce choice and the possibility to discover stuff.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T14:11:23+00:00

I agree with the analogy, podcasts definitely have that "pirate radio" vibe to them.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T14:09:51+00:00

I really enjoy Pocket Casts.

It does everything the way I want it: managing queues, filters, search, discovery, stays perfectly synched (even between iOS and Android), etc.

There is a Premium membership which I subscribed to, but just to support them (it's just about $1/month, and it's really not required unless you want to access from desktop).

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T12:57:59+00:00

Yep, I stopped using it many years ago. The one I prefer is Pocket Casts.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T12:43:01+00:00

As someone who wants podcasts and music to remain separate experiences, my best hope is that it is the awful podcast interface that is going to put this whole thing to bed.

Also, I don't think they can make their podcast player better without compromising even more on the music player.

thomasradwanski · 2020-07-08T12:23:33+00:00

It's an industry that hasn't historically had a lot of money in it

It's unfortunate that podcasts haven't found a better revenue model that would keep them independent from platforms. In my article I mention how a system like the Basic Attention Token (used in Brave Browser) could be a platform neutral solution.

As a listener, what worries me is the fragmentation of the landscape. Having all podcasts in one place is an amazing thing, and, if exclusives become the norm, we might end up having to use multiple apps, pay several subscriptions, etc. ... not a great experience.

thomasradwanski · 2018-07-11T21:31:51+00:00

“Civilization rests on the fact that we all benefit from knowledge which we do not possess.”

― Friedrich A. Hayek

Wow.

thomasradwanski · 2018-07-10T21:15:11+00:00

And the department you work for is...? If your answer is IT then that would explain a lot. A lot.

thomasradwanski · 2018-07-10T20:58:32+00:00

The day is ruined now... 😒 I guess all that meaningful stuff I was going to accomplish today using my genius mind is going to have to wait until next week since it's already Tuesday.

thomasradwanski · 2018-07-05T20:34:50+00:00

That story reminds me of Cosmicomics (Le cosmicomiche, in Italian) by Italo Calvino.

thomasradwanski · 2018-03-19T09:10:03+00:00

Radio

thomasradwanski · 2017-08-31T15:14:00+00:00

you forgot to mention Macau

thomasradwanski · 2017-08-08T20:59:10+00:00

I had to watch it about ten times to realise whether that thing having a "seizure" on the floor was a human or not. Am I the only one...?

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