Gregory's Server@jamescridland @jaredwhite For awhile I took the revised thought that aggregated platforms - the slight precursor to Spotify etc. was they _still_ used that underlying RSS feed to consume our podcast feeds to bring them into their walled garden - end users may not use RSS directly (even with say Pocket Casts I’m not sure the _player_ uses RSS now - the server… sure.
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@jaredwhite @jamescridland true - just saying in that instance - as far as an end user is concerned there's nothing RSS specbabble involved in the consumption of a podcast. @jaredwhite @talios But, whether it uses RSS at all or not is also just an implementation detail. The product that we describe is a piece of on-demand audio. It isn't wedded to a delivery platform or mechanism. Perhaps it was once. @jamescridland @jaredwhite I guess with the recent rise of Mastodon/Fediverse - reminding, and _maybe_ returning to the roots of podcasting away from walled gardens isn’t a bad thing. That may be fine for grass roots indie podcasters, but the high-profile big-money media behind Podcasts-with-a-capital-P just might not care. We’ve removed (one of) the technical barriers to getting peoples voices heard - and that’s always a good thing. @talios @jamescridland @jaredwhite I mean by all means call out “Spotify exclusive podcasts are bad for the common good”. I agree with that 100% as a good fight. Fighting to say that “they shouldn’t be technically called podcasts” is beating a dead horse and achieves nothing except mainstream eyes glazing over IMO. @talios Speaking as a coder who works closely with industry folks on audio distribution tech, I can assure you the corporate execs and marketing types don't care at all about the distinction. Personally I do care whether I can open the program in a non-proprietary podcast app, as do many of the other techies who have been listening to podcasts for a while. But the name "podcast" has clout, so they gleefully colonize it despite our objections.  @epilanthanomai @talios I appreciate hearing your perspective! Here's the thing I find upsetting. Podcasting becomes popular because it's so open, so accessible, such a low barrier to entry for a whole ecosystem of hosts and directories and players, etc. Much like the web itself. Then some corporate entities come along, gather up all that goodwill, and then use it to their advantage in a closed way—effectively stealing the brand. Business gonna business, but it sure rubs me the wrong way. @jaredwhite Oh, I'll happily go a step further and say it's flat-out harmful and wrong for them to do so, and harmful and wrong for journalists to report it neutrally as just a change in usage without a single critical word toward the harm done. FWIW Doctorow has a good article up in the last few days about "enshittification" that's pretty adjacent to all this. It doesn't address this exact point, but I think it's a good and relevant read anyway. / @talios @jaredwhite @epilanthanomai @talios the whole ecosystem grew on the directory of iTunes which Apple left open to anyone to use … if there hasn’t been this centralized database which is still one of the main sources for many podcast players the whole thing never would have happened. So corporate America made it happen in a sense … but in reality it’s a silly discussion as the ones about “what is the real format of music … live, vinyl, radio, cds or streaming” @derfrankie @jaredwhite @epilanthanomai iTunes support definitely leapfrogged things into the non-tech world for sure - but along side RSS don't forget we had OMPL for sharing distribution lists. I think I added OPML support to Norrell back the day but I basically ended dev work on that when jPodder came out (and then iTunes). Tho I was still one of the first to have automated download, integrated playback, and cross platform. I really should kept improving the app rather than switching. @derfrankie @jaredwhite @epilanthanomai and the answers 8-track :) @epilanthanomai @jaredwhite likewise I care - I may not be coding in that space anymore but have also been around since the beginning - different audiences get different language @jamescridland @talios @jamescridland @jaredwhite @talios @jamescridland @jaredwhite Insofar as it matters (not very far, I grant you!) Pocket Casts does use RSS on the client, even the web client. It makes cross-site requests to the RSS feeds to refresh and stream the audio. The server is just for synching subscription lists and listening positions. Not very important, but knowing how things work is fun. |
@talios @jamescridland Well that's just splitting hairs. Whether Pocket Casts' servers download the RSS and then send the info to my client, or my client downloads it directly, is an implementation detail. The point is that Pocket Casts is nothing more than the middleman between where the feed is hosted and my ears.