I've already seen this start happening with Parcast. Since being purchased by Spotify, they're using their existing podcasts to advertise other "podcasts" that are only available streaming on Spotify. I'm guessing the ones I listen to now will eventually go away into the Spotify walled garden.
The Talk Show - the most popular (and profitable AFAIK) Apple related podcast. The chance of Gruber going Spotify only are basically 0.
Accidental Tech Podcast - seeing that one of the cohosts (Marco Arment) actually developed one of the most popular podcast apps for iOS, I don’t think he is going to make a podcast that can’t be listened to on his own app.
Under The Radar - another podcast by Marco Arment.
Exponent - Ben Thompson of Stratechery. He doesn’t directly monetize his podcast. He has a very successful paid newsletter. He wouldn’t want to put his podcast out of reach of the most people.
Manager Tools/Career Tools - the only ads they do on their podcasts are for their own products.
Some developer focused podcasts
Various NPR podcasts.
Etc.
All the podcasts I listen to have a vested interests in reaching the broadest audience possible.
Emphasis on "I". You are not everyone, and so you don't control all the demand, and so you don't control the direction that the market moves in. Though it's not self-evident that we're headed towards podcast centralization, I think it's a legitimate concern here.
Social networks like Facebook ate a decent part of the open internet's cake in the 2000s because the centralized services were easier to set up and user for the end users (compared to the RSS and SMTP hacks).
I think that's what is going to matter here: If Spotify does a significantly better job than plain RSS, then they're going to be "the" place to listen to podcasts, and can start building a closed ecosystem and then use their monopoly to rent seek. And like in the social networks case, I don't think it's going to be that hard to improve on plain RSS. Some podcasting apps already have comments, user ratings, etc. and I definitely find this sort of thing useful.
Maybe the path of least resistance in these sorts of situations is always some degree of centralization, but I obviously hope the tide starts going back out at some point - preferably complete decentralization, rather than just federated protocols. I think it's a bit like how native apps can move faster (in terms of new APIs and stuff), and the web slowly follows along, waiting for certain things to be "proven" before standardizing them. I think the web wins in the long run, but native apps end up being the "exploratory" instrument in our search algorithm.
How many of the top 50 podcast do you suppose would be willing to give up their broader market to be Spotify only?
If you were creating a website, how much would Microsoft have to pay you to be exclusively discovered with Bing and not be found with Google?
How would they even measure this? What share of those is Spotify users?
Spotify is at 10%
https://a16z.com/2019/05/23/podcast-ecosystem-investing-2019...
https://www.reddit.com/r/podcasting/comments/9ytna1/does_spo...
However, Overcast also caches RSS feeds but it does send the number of subscribers for a feed in the header of the GET request. It also doesn’t cache the actual audio.
We've refused to put any of our 8 podcasts on Spotify for various reasons. One of the reasons is that they will accept money from paying customers and from ad co's for non-paying listeners, but simply want our content for free. Ummm... no thanks.
Could this be Spotify’s version of AdWords for audio?
Most podcasters that are made an offer that they can’t refuse, probably won’t refuse.
Would you take your website off the web and host your content exclusively as a Facebook page?
If the most affluent audience is iOS users, then Spotify probably sees this as critical to success on iOS because it gives them something that people can't get from Apple Music.
How many of the top 50 podcast do you suppose would be willing to give up their broader market to be Spotify only?
It's interesting: exclusive deals haven't worked well in the music industry because artists make most money outside the platform in concerts etc, and exclusive deals eats into that. OTOH, media plays (eg streamers, TV shows) make most of their money directly from the show and so exclusive deals make sense.
I think many of the top 50 podcasts are exclusively advertising supported, and so they will be tempted by an exclusive deal.
We know that the top Apple related podcasters charge between $5500-$6500 a spot for three to four ads per episode. How much do you think the top more general podcast like Stuff You Should Know charge?
Do you think they would stop publishing podcast that can be found not only when people click on the Podcast app that comes preinstalled with all iOS devices, but can also be found on other podcast apps that use Apple’s public API to its podcast directory?
It may even be cheap - Howard Stern's deal is reported to be $90m/year (and that is exclusive to one publisher).
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
These open spaces and preferred arrangements have to be defended or they will die.
But now, we are actually in a golden age of having ad free content for TV.
Of course you have Netflix, Amazon Prime etc. But you also have Hulu’s ad free tier that offers content from NBC, ABC, and the Fox networks without ads and you have CBS All Access. You can also get ad free content from AMC.
Someone has to pay for the content. If you are willing to pay for ad free video, there are plenty of options.
All four of them?
And Hulu's fake ad-free tier is pretty ridiculous.
Is that not the case?
And probably knowing the demographics of HN, you wouldn’t be that interested in Greys Anatomy.
What ads do you see on Hulu’s ad free tier? The extra on demand content you get is from Hulu Live.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/07/26/arts/will-cable-tv-be-inv...
You are grossly underestimating the threat. The majority of people don't even know what an RSS feed is, and a lot of users are already listening exclusively through Spotify. For them, those are the "podcasts". The change is already ongoing, and Spotify will not stop until staying out of its platform will no longer be an option for podcast producers. They will swallow up the whole ecosystem if they don't get stopped, just like Facebook did with the publishing industry.
And there is a difference between people listening to standard podcasts through Spotify where Spotify just caches RSS feeds and audio (where you can still get pretty good stats from what I’ve heard.) and going Spotify only.
In the former case, Spotify is just another podcatcher.
This is exactly what happened when FB took over content distribution. People didn't necessarily like it, even as they adopted it because of the convenience.
Why could they do this? Was it because you were exclusively on their platform? No. It was because your readers were exclusively on their platform. And that is what Spotify is already accomplishing. Slowly but surely, more and more people are using Spotify for all of their listening needs.
This seems like the kind of thing that can flip very suddenly.
For Spotify users, who are already used to streaming everything, listening to podcasts through Spotify might offer a fair amount of convenience. For podcasters looking to monetize, Spotify can offer something special: The ability to get paid for your work directly, without having to deal with hawking mail order razor blades, which I imagine can feel degrading to some creators, or take on the extra work of maintaining an attractive set of Patreon incentives. It might be that the only missing ingredient is a critical mass of Spotify users to give the first few podcasters reason to feel confident taking the plunge.
Maybe they don't even need to get anyone to jump in feet first. I could see a more prolific podcaster such as Aaron Mahnke perhaps being willing to give it a shot with one of his projects. But a few initial successes might be all it takes to kick off a chain reaction. Sort of like how, at the party we were hosting last night, it seemed like people were settling in for the night, but, once the first person left, our house was empty within 20 minutes.
Godwin is alive and well.
I think the risk is that Spotify can throw a big bundle of money to a podcast that is currently listed on a feed, and bring them into a walled garden where the only way to hear them is on Spotify.
For now. But we've seen this game before. When a critical mass switches to a closed ecosystem, you're either going to be forced to move with the herd (because most of your podcasts will move and new podcasts will start-up exclusively within the walled garden), or you'll be left behind.
If you target a high income demographic. It’s a lot easier to get direct response advertisers selling either expensive items or subscription based products where the lifetime value of the customer is high.
Back in the day people said the definition of a podcast was two guys talking about tech sponsored by SquareSpace.
That's because podcasts are still part of an open ecosystem. I think the current system works very well and I don't want it to change, but I can see a walled-garden arise and lock the majority of content away behind proprietary podcast clients (much as video content is locked inside the YouTube garden).
Well that's just bad faith use of semantics.
Spotify bought companies that produces podcasts. As of now you can still enjoy said podcasts outside of Spotify, using your preferred player but if they decide to force you to use their software will those programs suddenly stop being called podcasts?
One of the most successful podcast over the past decade is “Stuff You Should Know”. The hosts go out of their way not to talk about the subject before hand to make the show seem more organic.
Would you call something that couldn’t be viewed in a browser a “web page”?
If you told me I should listen to this great podcast. I’m going to search on Overcast (which uses Apple’s podcast directory API), if it’s not there, it doesn’t exist. I can’t put it in my playlist, control it from my Watch app etc.
As far as Apple, Apple’s podcast directory and app are the very definition of “open”. Apple just indexes publicly available submitted RSS feeds. When you subscribe from Apple’s podcast app, the app itself polls the publishers RSS feed and plays directly from the publisher’s servers.
You can also subscribe to a podcast directly from the app using the url to the podcast - it doesn’t have to be in Apple’s directory.
Apple even offers a public API of the podcast directory that can be used by anyone on any platform.