How does podcasting work?
The idea of podcasting, as invented by the "podfather" Adam Curry was a simple one:
1. Anyone can record a song, interview, medley of music or whatever he pleases.
2. You put this audio file on your own server or hosting space. Back then, many internet providers would give customers 10 to 250MB of storage and an e-mail address with an internet plan.
3. Add your RSS feed to Adam's database of all known podcasts, with its URL and a brief description. This database or list quickly became known as the "podcast index."
4. Let your subscribers know about your latest episode by adding a record on your personal RSS feed.
5. Usually, your podcasting app is set up to check periodically all the RSS feeds of all the podcasts that you are subscribed to. The app will then download the audio file with its description and shows you a new episode.
Who hosts the RSS feed and audio file?
RSS is a brilliantly simple and still very vibrant technology today. Chances are, you are reading this blogpost on your favourite RSS reader.
As mentioned before, the technology of RSS feeds and hosting audio files is trivially simple, but the costs are non-zero. Also, those hip-and-happening kids that all want their own podcast show might not know how to rent a VPS, set up a web server and register their RSS-URL-feed at Apple's podcasting index.
To fill up this gap, companies like Anchor.fm stepped in and made simple to use apps available that let you record audio, do some editing, and upload the audio file with the press of a button. The business case for these companies? Stick some advertisements in these audio files and rake in some advert €€€.
Spotify recently bought Anchor.fm, and other small podcast-hosting-supported-by-ads-companies are merging or being bought as well. More and more of these companies now follow the Spotify and Amazon model of only letting paying subscribers listen to the shows they host.
This means that, slowly, the wonderful world of free-for-all podcasting is disappearing. The open web is dying by a thousand cuts, and this particular movement cuts deep.
Who hosts the Index?
Steve Jobs was very much taken in by the idea of podcasting. I guess the independent guys and gals that do artsy stuff in their garages with vintage guitars and new MacBooks spoke to him on a personal level. Steve proposed in 2005 to Adam that Apple take on the heavy burden of hosting the podcast index. To the best of my knowledge, the usage of Apple's podcast index is free until now. Having a company with 'deep pockets' take care of your hosting needs is a fine solution indeed. Until it needs changing in a way said company doesn't appreciate. [imagine ominous music here].
What if Apple pulls 'a Google' on the world and pulls the plug on this free and open index? Various podcasting apps and content providers saw wisdom in making periodical copies of Apple's podcast index and hosting their own copy that is only known and accessible from inside their own products.
This is the reason why after adding a new podcast to Apple's index, it will show up in different podcasting apps at different times: these apps might be querying a self-hosted and slightly out-of-sync copy of the index instead of the prime one.
The next step for some of those podcast app makers was a predictable one: "exclusive podcasts." If you have your own version of the index, you could add stuff that nobody else knows about! Spotify and Amazon now have a bunch of "podcasts" that are only accessible to paying customers and only via their apps and API's (for smart speakers, for example). I put the word between quotes because a true podcast is supposed to be accessible to all. Calling these shows, great as they might be, "podcasts," is misleading. They aren't freely accessible any more.
If bribing paying the makers of these shows to be exclusively on your platform is raking in more money than it costs, then it makes business sense. So how can we re-make the open podcasting ecosystem so that it becomes financially more interesting to stay open instead of becoming unfindable behind one of the various paywalls?
Can we break out of the ever more walled gardens?
We have so far found these problems with podcasting 1.0 (as we shall now call it because there is a podcasting 2.0):
1. The podcast index is currently freely hosted by Apple, but who knows for how long?
2. Podcast makers, no matter how popular they become, have only limited options to monetize their growing labour of love:
a. Read out cheesy adverts beginning, during and at the end of every show you record.
b. Sell out to a big publisher who sells access to your show.
c. Beg ask nicely for donations via Patreon and the likes. I know some sell merch on their websites (like the wonderful Ologies podcast by Alie Ward)
d. Have the good grace to be self-funded
3. Hosting of the RSS feed and audio files must be done by somebody somewhere.
4. What if I really like a certain fragment of a podcast? How can I let the makers know I really liked that point?
5. How can a guest that is in one (part) of an episode profit from his guest-appearance, if at all?
Most of these limitations of the old model of podcasting are solved by Podcasting 2.0.
1. There is once again an open index, independent of Apple's generous hosting provisions. This index can be downloaded as a Sqlite3 database file. The hosting of this file, and the API's that provide free access to it, are supported by donations.
2. Podcast makers can receive per-minute micro-transactions for their content, totally omitting the need for adverts or selling merchandise.
3. Hosting of audio files and the RSS-feed is still not fully decentralized, but since the podcasting 2.0 metadata is in the index and hosted separately from the audio files, you can add data to your podcasts show that isn't supported by Anchor/Spotify/Transistor/Captivate or whichever hosting provider you use.
4. After you add your podcast to the podcasting 2.0 index, you can start receiving per-minute and/or one-time donations right from the listeners' podcasting apps. I'm counting 10 podcasting apps that support this new feature. My favourite podcasting 2.0 app is Breez, but I'm hoping that the old-tech podcasting app that I also still use, called Overcast, will start supporting podcasting 2.0 soon too.
5. If you are a bit more technically inclined, you could alter the meta-data per episode and make it so that any donation that comes in between minute X and Y is split in Z ways, between you, the co-host, your guest and the default 5% to your audio technician (for example). This means that guests on the show can get their fair share of donations!
How to win over old school podcasters who haven't upgraded yet?
Currently, only 0.35% of all podcasts have upgraded to Podcasting 2.0, if we take the number of upgraded podcasts to be 15126 out of a total of 4224060.
Why should a popular podcasting app upgrade to support value4value if only 0.35% off all podcasts supports new features? And why should any podcast upgrade to podcasting 2.0 if most podcast players (and hosting platforms) don't support micropayments out-of-the-box? To break this chicken-and-egg problem, I propose a few solutions:
1. Podcast players that support Podcasting 2.0 should make no (or minimal) visual distinction between podcasts with and without the value4value tag in their RSS feed.
2. When a podcast that is playing doesn't have the value4value tag the donations that are streaming to the podcast are not lost in the void, but are reserved in a way that is keyed to the know email address in the podcasting 2.0 directory.
3. Once a sizable sum (let's say €100) is accumulated into the account that goes with the known email address, the good people of podcasting 2.0 send out an email letting the podcast makers know that by making an account they can receive their donations. Of course, the stupid simple easy of adding a value-tag in the RSS feed van be explained in the same e-mail.
4. This way some new podcasts are slowly won over to upgrade to podcasting 2.0, while I as a listener to a podcast that has not yet upgraded can already start donating to my podcast of choice today 😍
Join in on the conversation by commenting on Stacker News (supports value4value) or Hacker News (doesn't support value4value, yet).
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