“Wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement - Anil Dash
www.anildash.com
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.

[…] being able to say, “wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.

What podcasting holds in the promise of its open format is the proof that an open web can still thrive and be relevant, that it can inspire new systems that are similarly open to take root and grow.

  • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    9 months ago

    Could someone explain to me (I’m a developer so use whatever terms you like, maybe), how does the massive amount of podcasts reach the world? Say if I wanted to make a podcast app (I don’t, I love Pocket Casts), where would I sync the massive list’o’casts? Does it work like that? Or do you scrape the entire internet? What is happening?

      • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        9 months ago

        So how do the aggregators sync with each other to get all the podcasts? Or is it up to the podcast to “post” to all the aggregators?

        • QuarterSwede@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          9 months ago

          The aggregators don’t sync with each other. The podcast creators upload the new show to each aggregator (or use an app that uploads to multiple).

          • Victor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            Okay cool, that I think explains everything I’ve wondered about this topic lol. Awesome, thank you!

            • NightAuthor@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              9 months ago

              And they don’t even have to go through an aggregator, it’s just for ease of use and discovery, pretty much every app will let you put in an rss feed url, so podcast could be self hosted only reliant on having an internet connection… well, hell…. Only reliant on having a shared network connection with your target audience

              • capital@lemmy.worldEnglish
                1·
                9 months ago

                The one paid podcast I pay for does this.

                You pay on their site and then you get a personal RSS URL to put in your catcher.

        • yogurt@lemm.eeEnglish
          13·
          9 months ago

          Compared to Reddit or Twitter anyway, they haven’t killed their API yet so apps like pocket casts are mainly using iTunes for search

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            9 months ago

            Are you sure about this? I was under the impression there were several aggregators out there who all sort of shared data, iTunes just being one of them. Maybe you are totally right, but if you are that sort of undermines the original post, which is saying that the podcast ecosystem doesn’t depend on any one company/org.

        • Skelectus@suppo.fiEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Maybe if Apple realizes they have this running somewhere behind their mountain of money.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.worldMEnglish
        22·
        9 months ago

        iTunes api, and if apple turns evil there are other list-o-cast apis like fyyd.de.

        Whoever downvoted this has no clue. The Apple Podcast directory is currently unrestricted for any podcatcher to crawl and to get the RSS feeds. That may change at some point but for now it’s actually the best maintained RSS feed directory. The aforementioned fyyd.de is a good but less complete alternative. It relies of community submissions. fyyd.de itself is not an open source service, though.

      • wheeldawg@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        Apple has been evil since day 1. When have they done any single thing that wasn’t evil? The EO is family a terrible, wireless person. I’m so confused what you mean.

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.mlEnglish
      10·
      9 months ago

      The protocol used for it is a bit of an older protocol, but basically it uses the RSS protocol. It came out in the 90s and hasn’t been updated since 2014, and I haven’t touched any code related to it since before 2019. Otherwise, it’d just be standard HTTPS for websites like Spotify etc and whatever podcast discovery system they have on their site etc.