What was not mentioned in this article is how awful talk radio is these days. Especially morning-zoo radio [1] where they have the exact same 3 person radio show in every city: 1) the old school radio guy, 2) the young "edgy" dude who goes too far, and 3) the girl who never contributes anything, except to tell the guys they are being too "crazy and wild".
The shows use something called 'prep burger' which is prerecorded or prewritten comedy bits that multiple stations reuse, such as fake prank calls (real ones are illegal now). They buy access to a database of them and shameless reuse comedy bits with zero originality.
It's like mainstream pop music, the corporations have focus-grouped all the creativity out of the shows and keep everything within the safe confines of control and management. And I won't even get into their obsession for political correctness.
The days of Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony style talk shows are gone. Even XM Satelite radio talk shows have all been neutered.
This is why podcasts are new and interesting. The personailities are free to do and say whatever they want. They dont have management or producers telling them what audiences want to hear. So they create authentic and original content.
Everything you mentioned is a negative for traditional radio.
Podcasting became "a thing" many years ago, but it's experiencing a 'Renaissance' in 2014, which means that it's "coming back" to put it simply.
What is actually different in 2014 that makes podcasts successful?
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I personally believe it's the success of internet connected mobile devices. Your phone is a true functional replacement for your car radio. Today, you can TRIVIALLY listen to live or prerecorded podcasts.
In 2006 you would have to pre-download everything you wanted to listen to, using a PC or a Laptop. If you wanted to listen to something on a whim, your only choice was radio.
Today, you can see a tweet from someone you follow, tap a link, and listen without any technical knowledge.
> What is actually different in 2014 that makes podcasts successful?
Podcasting is no longer the domain of amateurs and the tech savvy. Talk radio is a professional business and the talent from that industry are beginning to start their own podcasts, and sometimes totally leaving FM/AM/satelitte radio behind.
In addition to pro radio hosts, nearly every comedian is also starting their own podcasts. Bill Burr runs one of the best. Hollywood is also adopting podcasts. Kevin Pollack runs a super popular show and is getting big interviews guests such as celebrities like Tom Hanks.
Podcasting is merging with the traditional entertainment industry and branching out from purely simple niche topics. Advertising is paying a lot of attention to podcasting. I heard one radio host gets paid $2 million/yr and he's not even the top podcast on iTunes.
So the difference is it's becoming a general, mainstream entertainment platform.
But WHY? You're just describing what happens when a medium takes off.
Why are all of these pros suddenly starting their own? Why is it becoming mainstream now instead of in 2004? Certainly there are some trailblazers in there that through luck or foresight were doing it early, but a lot are doing it because they've seen that the audience is there and it won't be a waste of time.
I agree with the article because it fits my personal experience. I bought a car a year ago with a Bluetooth enabled sound system and almost immediately starting devouring podcasts because of how easy it was.
Podcasting is more accessible, and the fact that it is far better than the mundane competition (traditional radio) means people are happy to jump to the alternative of choosing their own programming.
Sure, the iPod made it easier, but beyond connected cars, which the article suggests, capable software and Wi-Fi (or 3G/4G) on every device means it costs almost no effort. When I first got into podcasting, I had to plug in my iPod to a computer every night to let iTunes handle the transfer, and sometimes even then it didn't work and I would be stuck the whole day without my programming. Now, you can just pick a podcast aggregator and download the latest five episodes of any podcast in a matter of minutes. The fact that it has become so easy is what drives people to switch from listening to their local talk shows to listening what they actually want to hear.
I believe a parallel can be drawn to the threat felt by cable TV now that HBO is offering content to subscribers independent of their cable subscriptions.
> was the world of radio so different 8 years ago?
Absolutely. Ad rates have fallen and the number of outlets that you can listen to radio in are fading away. Clock radios are being replaced by smartphones, and kitchen radios are something your mother had 15 years ago. Go to Target... Clock radios had 16ft of shelf space in 2004. Today, there are like 8 choices on a single shelf sandwiched between Bluetooth speakers and cordless phones.
AM radio cannot afford local talent or local news. So it's mostly devolved into the crazy political stuff and infomercial style programming. The few stations that make an effort to have local content are often pushing mobile apps for listening more heavily.
Podcasting is growing because we've saturated the population with smartphones, and people are figuring out how to produce a professional sounding show cheap.
My life is enriched with the phrase "morning zoo", to be sure.
But most FM radio has never really been talk radio with NPR stations being the notable exception. On top of that, FM radio's ads (during music) have always made it completely unpalatable for me.
AM radio has had talk radio for a long time, but AM is of extra-low quality at any distance from the transmitter, and often has a certain zoo-like quality of its own.
It's also interesting that about a quarter of the podcasts that I listen to now are NPR/PRI podcasts.
"where they have the exact same 3 person radio show in every city"
On every station, not in every city. There is no radio alternative where I live other than morning zoo shows.
This is a typical indication of aggressive narrowcasting. "Our goal is to increase our percentage of morning zoo listeners by becoming a better morning zoo". Unfortunately the product that is the most popular among zoo listeners is likely abhorrent to the general population. They're going to chase each other all the way down until the few advertisers left won't be able to pay the electric bill, and right up to the bitter end they'll be trumpeting their "percent of total listeners" metrics rather than "total number of listeners" metrics. All I care about is having a bigger slice of the pie, and don't care how much smaller the whole pie gets.
I think these things are not always inherent. I think podcast are a very free medium. That in itself often invites quality. There really is a difference between free media and non-free media and these things are relative to each other.
Ultimately, people listen to podcasts because they're good.
The radio I listen to (in my car, the only place I think anyone listens to radio) is WQED (SF public radio), WCBS (news station), BBC and Bloomberg on satellite, and when genuinely desperate, CNBC.
Everything else, both terrestrial and satellite, seems to be horrible.
I'm personally experiencing a renaissance of podcast myself, although part of why I stopped listening to podcasts several years ago was because I had moved from CA to NY, sharply limiting the time I was sitting in a car for hours (in a subway, you can play Angry Birds).
The Serial podcast is fantastic...I've forgotten the workflow of how to subscribe to podcasts and have them show up in my iPod, so I just go to the homepage (http://serialpodcast.org/) and listen to them individually. This American Life has an excellent iOS app that's worth the $2.99 fee.
The power of the podcast, or of radio in general, is to me, just another example of the captive power of basic, non-interactive narrative forms, something that is too easily lost in the rush to cram doodads into web publishing...I'm not saying non-interactive narrative is always the most ideal way to communicate, but it certainly isn't a weak or lesser way. I think the success of Kindles and of simple publishing sites like Medium also attest to the power of text. Given that narrative power, and the hugely reduced complexity in producing single-media content, it never hurts to go simple if you have a compelling idea or story.
edit: A commenter beat me to this, I was just about to post that the serialpodcast subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/serialpodcast/) is the best place on the Internet to discuss Serial, with at least a few of the people involved/related to the events going on to discuss things. It has a respectable size of 3,580 readers...which is not much compared to the biggest reddits, but the number of threads and comments is pretty amazing...and hell, r/journalism is less than 7,000 users.
I also don't think it's a coincidence that reddit, like HN, is a highly-successful discussion forum because of its commitment to a simplified medium (virtually all plaintext)
Check out Pocketcast - http://www.shiftyjelly.com/pocketcasts I use it on Android and it's awesome. It has tons of features but automatically downloading the episodes and playing the audio at faster speed are my favorite options. I listen to almost all of the podcasts at 1.6-1.7x speed.
Couldn't agree more. Narrative is part of being human. Talking can be interactive (think Socratic method), but linear narrative--stories, poems--has been with us forever.
Medium and friends recognize this. Apps like Talko do too in their own way--taking a basic form like voice and allowing things like asynchronicity.
I've been into podcasts for about 6 or 8 years now and, as stupid as this sounds, it has really changed my life. Not in some huge way, but still, those are strong words. There are just so many mundane, crappy things you need to do throughout the day. Especially since I've now got two kids. I have no idea how many hours I spend a week preparing meals, cleaning the kitchen, picking up toys, vacuuming, etc. Radiolab, TAL, Serial, Startup, et all turn that time from boring drudgery into something I _enjoy_. The quality of some of the content is amazing. I feel like I've sat down to watch a documentary, but instead I just cleaned the whole house or went for a run.
I discovered that I could listen to This American Life while playing Borderlands (and its sequels). The game doesn't have characters that talk to you nonstop (especially when you are playing side missions) and something about the shoot-y gameplay meshes extremely well with talk radio.
The weird part is that the two mediums got completely and inseparably tangled together in my memory. When I think of a specific This American Life episode I can instantly recall the 3d layout of the level that I happened to be exploring while listening to the episode. And when backtracking later in the game I see the terrain features and the ideas and important parts of the show flood back into my mind.
I find it very strange, and very interesting, too.
That's really cool! I experience the exact same thing. I used to listen to Stern everyday for years. When I hear old shows with memorable parts, I can remember the exact location, time of year, lighting, and weather of the moment when I first heard it. And when I think about various locations, times of my life or things that I did, I start to remember moments from the radio show.
It's really fascinating how our brains form strong memories through these auditory and visual associations. It seems like the more interesting the the sources are, the more likely you'll remember it for many years to come.
i've only started listening to podcasts in the last 3 or 4 months, but what you said really resonates. i subscribe to about 40 podcasts now, and it lets me soundtrack all of the mundane and tedious things in my life (the hour+ of walking i do every day, the hour+ of jogging i do every other day, the hour+ of cooking i do every day, etc) is soundtracked by either neat minidocumentaries or conversations between people i think are funny and interesting. between podcasts and my chromecast i've completely severed myself from traditional broadcast media and i feel much richer for it.
a few recommended podcasts for others who may want some:
-the podcasts of npr's better shows: this american life, radiolab, the moth, snap judgment, the organist -- by extension, serial, which isnt an npr show but is TAL affiliated
-the radiotopia.fm suite: 99% invisible is the best known, but all of them are top notch imo
-the duckfeed.tv suite: best known for watch out for fireballs, weekly discussions of a different retro video game; all of their shows are videogame oriented, and frankly while i barely play video games at all anymore i enjoy listening to their discussions
-no such thing as a fish: weekly half hour of a group of people quickly rattling off interesting facts
-i don't even own a television: reviews of bad books in discussion format
-the flop house: reviews of bad movies in discussion format
-roderick on the line: conversational comedy podcast
-uhh yeah dude: long-running general comedy podcast
As a counterpoint, all of my good ideas come while preoccupied with mundane tedium. The mind will try really hard to come up with something more important or exciting it would rather be doing. (The trick is to not go on a bottomless wikipedia spree but first short-circuit the daydream into hastily written notes and return to the mundane.) I'm not sure I would want to be constantly enjoying others' conversation, because when will my own shy thoughts bubble up?
Completely agree with you.
I know this sounds strange, but I tend to develop a sort of personal connection with some of the hosts. As if I've known the my entire life. This doesn't seem to be imparted via other content delivery methods.
I know what you mean, although in the last year I've strongly felt the same thing with people I've subscribed to on YouTube as well. It requires persistence and honest personality from the creator though (such as vlogs), any sort of scripted or slick experience is hard to connect to, maybe that's why podcasts work better at this.
Personally, I've gotten into podcasting when it became easy enough to do so. About ten years ago, you could download Podcasts with iTunes, then sync them as a playlist, then... too complicated.
A few years ago this changed. I now have an app on my phone that auto-downloads the newest episodes of my favourite podcasts in the background. Whenever I want to listen to a podcast, the app will have one available. Additionally, these apps allow me to speed up playback, read through show notes, and skip forward over ad reads or boring sections.
This is very convenient, and only began to exist in the last few years, hence the "new" popularity of podcasts in the last few years. I don't think we need to invoke in-car internet access to explain podcast popularity.
The Nokia N91, released 8 years ago, had 3G and Wi-Fi and came with an official podcasting app that could auto-download episodes. It also had better sound quality than the contemporary iPod, an 8GB hard drive and full support for music playback over Bluetooth.
The S60 were really nice devices, it's such a shame the UI/UX didn't match the capabilities :|
Spot on for me as well. The workflow you mention of Mac iTunes, discovery, download, change settings, plug in your iOS device, sync over USB 2, etc changed into simply opening up the Podcasts app on your iOS device. Settings are synced, I can steam, I can download, I can discover, etc all within the same easy to use app made by Apple.
Add that there are numerous exceptional podcasts out there, such as Science Friday, Radio Lab, This American Life, Serial, etc -- it's lovely combination. Plus, most content producers have seemed to have finally gotten over the gimmicky delivery methods like video podcasts. It works when the content lends itself, but this is not common.
I suppose some of it even has to do with the cell/isp network speeds we are all accustomed to now. The thought of streaming or downloading podcasts over a cell network years ago meant frustration and long delays.
I don't get the auto-downloading. Why aren't podcsts simply streamed like spotify and Netflix/hulu? I actually think that's what might be continuing to hold podcasting back. I don't want to subscribe, I just want to listen.
Most of the other answers have been technical, along the lines of the storage space and bandwidth are minimal. Once you can download 20 times faster than you can listen, and you've got at least one show in the backlog of things to listen to, it doesn't matter. However, I'll give a content oriented response against streaming.
Selecting a stream at a random time midprogram would work very well for content that has no past and no future and no logic or information, like a morning zoo show or a news show or sports coverage. I guess that stuff is called infotainment now.
That wouldn't work very well at all for maybe 90% of current podcast content. If the content were aggressively dumbed down, it might be possible to join in the middle, but then no one would listen to the dumbed down stream given an option of non-dumbed down podcasts.
Maybe another way of phrasing it is its like the difference between tuning into a random webcam at a random comedy sports, vs watching this weeks sitcom episode. The former is likely to be pretty funny but no idea what you'll get, and the latter has at least has an 18 minute long story, if not a longer series based story.
Because where I live, the cell network is still not 100% reliable. At certain times or places, the stream would stop. Also, mobile data is not free, and volume-limited.
Personally, I do want to subscribe. I don't want Internet radio, I want podcasts.
I don't know about other phones but streaming is an option with the Windows Phone podcast app. I like to download mostly because I have a data cap and I set the app to download only on WIFI. If I find myself away from a hotspot and want to listen to a show, I can always just stream it.
I prefer to pre-download (automatically of course) podcasts as I listen while travelling, meaning sometimes the network drops out. Having said that however the podcast app I use (instacast) does indeed stream if I hit play on an episode that isn't already downloaded
That would burn through my data volume real quick … (some podcast clients do allow you to stream without subscribing or downloading, but I really don’t see the big difference).
One thing worries me that is not about podcasts themselves but about the podcast delivery ecosystem: a huge share of podcasters use Google's FeedBurner to deliver the podcast RSS feed and get statistics on listeners and subscribers.
Unfortunately, after Google acquired FeedBurner, they basically left it in the state it was in when they bought it, except that they disabled FeedBurner's API a couple of years ago. With Google's history of closing down projects that aren't part of their main focus (including other RSS-related projects like Google Reader), many are worried that Google will soon close down FeedBurner and leave thousands of podcasters in the dark.
That wouldn't be a problem if there were an easy way to migrate from FeedBurner to another platform. Unfortunately, there is not. If FeedBurner closes down, you will have to change to another RSS url, which means losing all your subscribers. Also, there is no practical way of changing the URL to your podcast's RSS in iTunes, the biggest podcast listening platform.[1]
It is possible to be in control of the RSS URL and still use FeedBurner by redirecting an URL on a domain you own to FeedBurner's RSS feed, but I suspect relatively few people have done that, and doing it after the fact means, again, losing all your subscribers.
[1]: According to Apple, you can report the podcast and get them to change the URL. In my experience, they simply never respond to such requests.
If FeedBurner closes down, you'll have months to tell your subscribers to switch URLs. Google doesn't shut down something like this overnight; Reader users had 3.5 months to switch.
W.r.t. iTunes, Libsyn[1] and others say you just have to add a <itunes:new-feed-url> tag to your current feed to make the change. Is this information outdated?
A lot of people subscribe to podcasts through directories spread out though tons of different apps, and you need to get the URL updated in each app. The No Agenda Podcast (with Adam Curry and John C Dvorak) went though this pain a few months back when their old meevio feed was shut down. Despite migrating their main feed years ago lots of directories had the old feed, and dedicated listeners had to find out it was broken in their particular app and report it.
Owning your own domain and routing all your stuff (ESPECIALLY email but also anything else associated with your identity) to is so important these days it's hard to understate it.
The article only anecdotally makes the claim that there was a downturn in podcast quality and listenership. I doubt that this actually happened. Instead podcasting has slowly been bubbling away and has now really broken through to be a more mainstream activity since it is a lot easier. I certainly never stopped listening to podcasts. We used to have to sync podcasts manually over USB to our iPods. Now we can download or stream them on the go with our smartphones and send them to the cars sound system via Bluetooth. Technology has gotten incrementally better until we reached now, where podcasting has become really easy.
This. Most of my current favorite show aren't new, some goes back to pre-2006 era. For me the game changer is the Podcast Addict[1] app, but it mostly just allows me to have a bunch of "listen sometimes" shows. For the good ones, I won't care if I have to download to PC and sync with my phone, like I didn't complain much when I have to go to a physical store to buy CD back when it's still a thing.
What a horrible and evil website! It hijacks the horizontal arrow keys to change articles. Please, web designers, stop hijacking my keys and doing other horrible stuff with JavaScript. The web is for documents, and documents shouldn't change how my browser works.
I personally am frustrated by sites that do this. The blogger example is particularly good as to why. I keep triggering it when I'm simply trying to scroll down an article or pan over an image.
I think another big factor in podcasts getting more popular these days is that the content and quality of podcasts are getting better. Today you don't need equipment and staff only radio stations can afford to produce high quality good sounding content. A computer with an USB mic and Audacity together with a tool like Auphonic [1] are enough to get good sound. The internet makes it easier to research stuff and prepare content collaboratively without being in the same room.
Because we strongly believe that there is a bright future for podcasting a friend and I started Podigee [2]. Our aim is to make publishing a podcast easier and faster so beginners can get an easy start and more experienced podcasters can focus on producing high quality content without worrying about publishing software and infrastructure.
Additionally we support a movement that was started here in Germany called Podlove [3]. They provide open source software like a Wordpress plugin for publishing podcasts and a web player which is currently completely revised (and will be pretty awesome after that). Besides that they also try to establish new standards and promote old ones that are not widely used (like paged feeds). Currently we (I do most of the coding) are working on a new kind of subscribe button [4] which will make subscribing a podcast a lot easier for listeners. We have a lot of podcast client developers on board to support subscribing through the button and we have high hopes that this will push podcasting even further. The button will see an official release in the coming weeks.
There's already such thing as "pcast://" links, which are recognized by most podcasting clients. It also doesn't get any easier than just offering the naked RSS feed. Any kind of obfuscation around that just makes things more painful for users.
First, it's actually not that simple :) We tried out like a whole lot of podcast clients (30+ I think) and 'are recognized by most podcasting clients' is certainly not true. That's why we recommend the following to client developers: If your OS allows it subscribe to the OS default (which is often pcast://) but also define your own schema (like mypodcastclient://). This allows us to have a 'Open device default app' link that on Android shows all installed clients that subscribe to pcast://, but also to specifically start a client with its schema.
Second, 'It also doesn't get any easier than just offering the naked RSS feed.' is also not true. We talked to a lot of people and subscribing to a podcast is a nightmare for people that don't get (and don't want to get) the concept of what an RSS feed is. And copying and pasting links from a webpage to an application is already an obfuscation (and a real pain in the ass on a mobile device) for the 'normal' user, so why not add a more user friendly obfuscation :)
However, the button is an experiment and we'll see if and how people will use it. Until now the feedback from podcasters and listeners is nothing but positive.
It seems strange to me they would go on so long about podcasts and really only talk about public radio-ish podcasts. I've been listening to podcasts since the time when it was best described as an on-demand public radio feed. Public Radio has been riding the peaks and troughs of podcasting, but I wouldn't say they are leading any renaissance, real or imagined.
If there is a renaissance, it's being created by comedy podcasts. Let's mention:
Jordan Jesse Go!
WTF with Marc Maron
Comedy Bang Bang
You Made it Weird with Pete Holmes
The Nerdist
Doug Loves Movies
Harmontown
And I'm not a huge fan but you have to mention Adam Carolla and Kevin Smith here too.
These are the people who made podcasting more than just convenient radio.
Podcasts are growing up. Access to them is easier than ever before. With mobile phones it’s nearly as easy to listen to podcasts you like as it is to turn on the radio – with the added benefit of being able to better pick and chose and, consequently, get a higher average quality (in respect to your own preferences). Plus, if you don’t happen to drive but are on the go you probably don’t have a radio with you, so podcasts (next to music) are just obvious to listen to.
All that infrastructure that makes access real easy wasn’t there throughout most of the 2000s. It was a kludgy process and you had to be quite active to make it work. (Manual syncing!)
So it’s easier to get podcasts and it’s also quite obvious that spoken audio content is attractive in many situation and with our devices we can make that content actually accessible to us in those situations – so of course podcasts are alive and well. We just expected too much too fast from them.
I still expect a bumpy road ahead, but just like blogs podcasts are here to stay and that’s that. Maybe they will even turn invisible after a while, you know, just another thing to do online (kind of like blogs did?), as normal as can be.
Seems like some journalistic backscratching. This American Life is trying to push Serial, and the Startup guy recently had a piece on This American Life, and if I remember correctly, is somewhat affiliated (could be wrong about that). Anyway, whatever. Serial is excellent and should be promoting itself however it can, and This American Life's quality goes without saying.
Well, This American Life and Serial are done by the same people, so that's not surprising. The "StartUp guy" was a producer for TAL for many years so that's where that connection comes from.
Also Blumberg's input on Planet Money quickly descended into the worst kind of sycophancy. naked capitalism did a very good job of calling him out on it. It's a shame because some of the early shows (eg giant pool of money) were very good.
I'm interested. Could you point me to a link to where naked capitalism calls out Blumberg? I hadn't actually heard of that site (show?) before and an initial Google isn't bringing me anything. Thanks.
Planet Money, which was Blumberg's main podcast for the last few years, is also a spinoff of TAL (created after The Giant Pool of Money episode[1]) and produced in partnership with them.
Between an hour long daily commute, the gym, and a life toiling away in a lab, I consume 4-6 hours worth of podcasts a day. I haven't seen anyone in this thread mention Stitcher Radio. Stitcher is by far the easiest way to consume podcasts, and is easily my most-used app.
As mentioned earlier, I think the increased prevalence of 4G/LTE wireless speeds have led to this renaissance. Also, it is now much easier to produce and distribute a podcast. The fact that advertisers are willing to shell out $5k for a 30 second ad spot certainly helps encourage the production of quality podcasts. Podcasts also provide an avenue for content delivery to those who are terrible writers, but incredible speakers.
For the HN crowd, I suggest checking out the Startup Podcast by Alex Blumberg of Planet Money fame (http://hearstartup.com). It's a brutally honest, often painful portrayal of a completely inexperienced guy ditching his comfortable life in order to start a podcasting company. Listening to him pitch Chris Sacca will cause you to scream out "WTF!" in sheer frustration. But good for Alex -- he's taking a risk that most only dream about.
I've recently gotten into podcasts, using Stitcher as my app of choice (which is ok, but not great -- any suggestions for Android alternatives?)
Other have already nailed the main points driving adoption: simplified workflow and the desire to fill dead time (driving is mentioned in the article; for me it is cleaning the house.)
I don't think enough is made of the fantastic marketing channel that podcasting is. If you put out a high quality podcast you can get into the ear of your target market every week, and they are even going to seek you out. It's really hard to match this with another channel, IMHO. Blog posts are of course super competitive. There is just a deluge of content and playing the sharing game is hard work, and visitors bounce. Email newsletters perform well but there is no doubt that processing email is a chore for most. Video requires too much active engagement, and is too expensive to produce. Podcasts aren't so popular yet that the market is crowded, listeners hang around for a long time, and they seek out podcasts for fill time in their day, rather than your content having to compete with other tasks that demand more active attention.
I'm curious to hear what you specifically like about Stitcher. I have tried, and own, almost all of the major podcast apps and it was my least favorite experience so far. Their whole business model seems to be to scrape other people's content, download it, compress it, serve it up from their own servers and slap additional ads on it.
Some things that turned me off of Stitcher:
* Includes it's own advertisements on top of the ads already in the podcasts themselves.
* Increasingly difficult to skip past the Stitcher ads and if you want to remove ads you have to pay a monthly fee.
* Can't browse the episodes of a podcast without actively listening to a podcast?
The UI just wasn't that intuitive for me. Part of the problem might have been that I was looking for a "podcast app" and this was more a "radio app" built out of my podcasts. Using something like PocketCasts or OverCast has been a much better experience to me:
* No additional ads.
* No extra monthly fees.
* Easier browsing/control of your podcast episodes.
What am I missing about Stitcher? I could see it being useful for podcast discovery, or for when someone is new to podcasts. I just struggle to understand it's insane popularity over other podcast apps.
I have no love for Stitcher. Back when I did the iTunes / sync dance a few podcasts I listened to mentioned it, so I tried it out. It's what got me back into podcasts, by making the process so much more convenient, but I don't really like how it works.
I'll also recommend PocketCasts on Android - it lets you do some nice things with custom playlists, etc. and there are a few features that you may not find immediately so play around. If you have multiple devices (e.g. phone and tablet) it syncs listened and position data between the devices, though it doesn't show on them which items have been downloaded on a different device.
When you're looking at the list of podcasts, you can long-hold to select (after selecting the first, taps select additional ones). Then you can tap the + icon at the top to add the selected podcasts to your "up next" list.
To manage the Up Next queue, start a podcast playing and get to the view for that episode (it'll be taking the full screen, not the popup of show notes). The icon at the top right that looks like a bulleted list is the one for managing the Up Next queue.
Finally, there isn't a good way to mark a podcast as "unheard" rather than partially played - the workaround is to open the show notes popup by tapping the episode, then tap the icon for marking as heard, then tap it again to mark as unheard.
I really enjoy BeyondPod, but sometimes I find it too complex for driving in the car, when it wants to create a new playlist or something. I have been looking at AntennaPod for that reason, its open source too!
I'd strongly recommend Pocket Casts. One extremely nice feature is that if you have multiple devices (including iOS ones) it will remember where you're up to in each show across devices.
The other killer is that they manage the episode refresh check through their servers so it's a single operation for your device to check for new stuff, instead of it having to go out and check (in my case >50) individual sites like other apps.
Sadly, you cannot copy the MP3s off an iDevice using Pocket Casts. I wanted to build an archive of a couple podcasts, and lost months of episodes when I wanted to replace my iPad.
This is probably to late for your use, but there is a neat Mac utility called iExplorer that lets you browse your iDevice's filesystem and copy files off of it. I'm pretty sure you could have grabbed the files using a trial of iExplorer.
Just to provide some diversity (I've never heard of Pocket Casts before), I use Podcast Addict on Android and I love it.
Auto-download + auto-add to playlist for certain podcasts makes it really easy to fire up the playlist without having to think about anything - I use the playlist widget so I jump right into the relevant screen.
It allows Android intents to trigger the downloads, so you can use Tasker/Llama to check for new episodes every time you connect to your car, or every time you get to a Wi-Fi network and start charging, or whatever.
It also has customizable skip buttons, so you can skip forward 15 seconds and back 10 even from the lock screen, for example, depending on your preferences.
It also has streaming and a multitude of other features, but the above are the ones that made me stick with it and stop looking for alternatives.
You'll find a lot of love for Pocket Casts for good reason. The interface is slick, things are pretty well laid out, and the instant check for new episodes is awesome. It used to be the app used, and would be the one I still use if they didn't change how they now manage the queued up 'current' playlist. You used to be able to see all unread shows, click on one and it would play that unread queue starting at that show. Now you have to manage that manually. It also has some difficulty handling certain special situations (auto delete listened to podcasts except from this series where it should never delete. The wording on the screens makes you think you can do this but you can't.)
I've tried about a dozen apps and currently use the mostly inferior, but very flexible Doggcatcher because when you listen to as many podcasts as I do, at 2.5x speed, the manual queue management is unfortunate.
I too love listening to podcasts every day. But I think this article has completely missed the mark on its main point. Most of the podcasts I listen to don't have ads (or just have a 5-10 second "sponsored by" spot), which is why I prefer them by far to commercial radio. On those that do have ads I fast-forward through them.
Edited to add: I often donate to support the podcasts I listen to in the hopes of keeping them ad-free.
What I mean is, a podcast is nothing but a regular file served from a web page. That's it.
And yet, by maintaining this false category, the end user is funneled through all manner of ridiculous and frustrating extra steps and wasted time just to ... wait for it ... download a regular file.
Every major media creator that has made their audio content available as a "podcast" makes it near impossible to simply grab the file. This has created a huge amount of confusion among non-tech folks who think some kind of special thing is happening when they click whatever weirdo pseudo-streaming "let's cycle through 8 different 250-character URLs before we feed the data to your browser raw" button ... "what app should I use to listen to this podcast ?" "how do I get this podcast onto my iDevice", etc.
I should be able to fetch/wget any podcast without doing major surgery on a webpage, downloading an intermediate XML file and then wading through it until I see a link.
The Podcast ecosystem allows programs to automatically fetch, pre-download and archive specific subscriptions of content. It's not a stupid idea. Perhaps some implementations are poor, but I'd rather have a purpose-built format for pulling down content than clicking on an Apache index page for the .ogg I want.
You can stream if you want, but downloading is one of the highlights of it. I can download it at home and listen for hours at work or on a trip without dealing with poor or capped cell signal (or, like the majority of people in the US/world, without any data plan at all).
Perhaps because people often listen to podcasts in places where cellular may not be available? (planes, often subways, general dead spots) That said, I wouldn't object to a podcast app that updated the index but didn't actually download any titles; perhaps some can already do that. But the actual space taken up by the downloaded podcasts isn't usually a big deal.
I've been using git-annex as a podcatcher (http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/git-annex_as_a_podcatcher/) which is pretty nice and lets you update the index without actually downloading anything (using the --relaxed flag). It's set up to run periodically with launchd.
"By the way, I can't wget a file from rsync.net either :P"
I'm not sure what you mean ... the very few binaries that we link to on our support pages are plain old file links that you can wget/fetch/curl.
No, you can't wget files in an rsync filesystem, but we aren't a file hosting site - there's no public usage here. Actually, we do allow plain old ftp access for legacy systems, so technically you can wget/fetch a file in an rsync.net filesystem. We'd recommend you don't, of course...
What's the difference between that and any other type of media on the internet? Take YouTube videos for example. An MP4 video file is also "nothing but a regular file served from a web page," yet YouTube doesn't include a "download" link for any videos on their site.
Right. So one has to install additional software to automate jumping through their hoops and download the MP4 file. In other words: no difference – I wish they would just give us the file in both cases.
I already have a video player that works the way I want it to work. Same thing with e-books and audio. (Having an app to manage the library of media is convenient once the collection gets larger, but I'll choose the app myself.)
Which podcast doesn’t just let you download the file?
I just checked all I’m subscribed to and they all just let me download the file, no problem. Subscribing just makes it much more practical and persistent.
There is no need for extra apps, they just make it more convenient.
"Take YouTube videos for example. An MP4 video file is also ..."
But there was a podcast recently that took me quite a while to get the real URL for because they only linked to iTunes. They seem to have fixed it now though (with a libsyn.com RSS link).
"Ridiculous and frustrating steps"? I can literally just tell my phone, out loud, "Play podcast Whatever" and it will play it for me, streaming it over the internet as required. If you prefer fingers, it's about four taps, two of which are to open the app.
I agree with you. For Serial at least, their website has direct download links to an mp3 file for all of their epsiodes: http://serialpodcast.org/#episodes
When I saw your username I was really hoping your comment was going to be about how back in your day you'd "subscribe to podcasts" by adding an rsync to your crontab (and hopefully something something FTP).
I totally missed podcasts when they were first a thing. But I've rediscovered them as part of my love of all things retrocomputing. There's some really fabulous ones out there, more than I can ever possibly listen to, but they keep me reasonably entertained while I'm washing dishes or doing house work or commuting.
It helps that the app I use kind of makes the entire thing pretty painless.
What worries me though is that several of the podcasts I subscribe to, but haven't gotten around to listening to yet are dead and thus the feeds are dead, and some of the feeds only show the most recent n podcasts, so I'm missing out on lots of the earlier shows.
Podcasts and old radio shows now keep me entertained when I can't watch. I think of them basically like on-demand tv. There's more available than I could possibly ever listen to.
For the topic area I'm interested in, it honestly doesn't matter at all if the show is old.
Yeah sure, I use Podcast addict. It let's you search and subscribe and either stream or download for offline playback. It also works with your chromecast.
Here's my list (warning it's long and some may no longer be alive):
- active time babble
- retronauts (there's a run of the show from 1up.com that's dead, and a new run that's in progress)
- 2 dudes and a nes
- all gen games
- ANTIC - the atari 8-bit podcast
- arcade and retro.com
- arcade hunters
- arcade impossible
- arcade outsiders
- arcade repair tips
- arcade tired
- armchair arcade radio
- brokentoken classic arcade
- cactus jacks arcade podcast
- catridge freaks
- chicken lips radio
- completely unnecessary podcast
- factory sealed
- famicom flashbacks
- floppydays vintage computing
- game boy crammer
- gameroom junkies arcade
- gaminghistory101
- genesis gems
- guys games and beer
- hardcore gaming 101
- how I started my own arcade
- insert coin
- jmac's arcade
- knights of the arcade
- last coin at the arcade
- lazy game reviews
- matt chat
- nes podcast
- nintendojo
- no quarter
- one man & his mic
- player one podcast
- radio free nintendo
- retro asylum podcast
- retro computing roundtable
- retro gaming roundup
- retro junkies minies
- retro junkies network
- retro obscura
- retro rejects
- retro rundown's podcast
- retrobits podcast
- retrocollect fm
- retrocore
- retrogaming with racketboy
- retrograde
- retrospin
- sprite castle
- super arcade theater
- super gamer arcade
- tadpog
- ten pence arcade
- the arcade (there's 2 of them)
- the atari 2600 game
- the c64 take-away podcast
- the colecovisions podcast
- the intellivisionaries podcast
- the mustache arcade
- the nes club presents
- pinball blahcade
- retro junkies super show
- the retro league
- retro tech addict's podcast
- retrobits podcast
- tone control
- vgmpire
- watch out for firewalls
Looking at that list, I think you might like Arcade and Retro, a podcast from Ireland which is still a going concern. I know the makers but have no stake in it, pretty good show. - http://arcadeandretro.com/
Edit:
Scratch that - they're already on the list, missed it the first time
I'm a big fan of the DOS nostalgia podcast: http://www.dosnostalgia.com/?cat=91 It only comes out once every few months, but the interviews and discussions are awesome if you're nostalgic for DOS & early home computing topics. The interview with Jim Leonard/Trixter on the early days of the PC is my favorite so far: http://www.dosnostalgia.com/?p=329 It's also a fun podcast because the host grew up in the Soviet Union so you get a different take on what was happening in DOS compared to the west.
Allow me to take this opportunity to mention that Roman Mars, of 99% Invisible (http://99percentinvisible.org/) fame, is holding another kickstarter to fund the collective of Radiotopia -- the idea that podcast producers can make a living wage to produce great content.
This kickstarter, like many of them, has a funding match going on where if they get more than 20,000 backers at any level, one of their corporate sponsors will chip in $25,000.
It's too bad the article didn't mention the explosion of history podcasts, thanks largely to Lars Brownworth (12 Byzantine Rulers) and then Mike Ducan (The History of Rome).
Since then there have been several dozen podcasts to get started, with a pretty diverse range of topics. Most of the ones I have checked out start out with "I was inspired to start this series after listening to Lars Brownworth/Mike Ducan...."
I've noticed googling for this kind of stuff usually finds advertising poorly hidden as curated lists. You can tell it runs off the rails when 90% of the list just so happens to be employees of one media megacorp. So as a public service I'll list the history podcasts I've actually listened to with some commentary, highlights, and (mild) criticism. All of these podcasts AFAIK are just one dude vs the world, or at most a couple guys as background helpers. Corporate podcasts typically have all the personality of an HR employee manual or an EULA, but one dude and a microphone always has a unique and interesting personality. May or may not like all of the personality, but at least its interesting.
History of Byzantium - Nice accent, dude, no sarcasm. About as detailed as the history of rome. Well researched. At the speed he's going I'm not entirely sure he will ever catch up with the present day, at least not in one presenter's lifetime. I exaggerate slightly, he's only spent about one calendar year on the century of the 600s.
When Diplomacy Fails - Pretty good in abstract, extremely good, for a kid (was just a college kid when he started). There is some "kid enthusiasm" which sounds good almost all of the time, although occasionally annoying. A detailed discussion of how the war of "fill in the blank" started. Has a bit of a bias that wars only start between civilized-ish countries when their diplomatic corps and/or cabinet advisors screw up, and he pulls no punches on who screwed up and tends to take sides and explain the facts and why he took a side, which is interesting and I usually end up agreeing. The "informal roundtable with friends" followup episodes are totally skippable. The very long WWI sub-series is well worth every second spent listening to them.
Revolutions. Focus with laser like precision on the causes, events, and outcome of various revolutions. This guy is going places and will be a famous name someday. Can't find much to complain about.
The British History Podcast. A bit more comedic than the others. Where he finds so much source material is a mystery. He's an unemployed (formerly unemployed?) lawyer so he sometimes focuses more than others on judicial / .gov process type stuff, because that's kind of what lawyers do, which is interesting.
The Bulgarian History Podcast - Lots of history in a small country. Flashes between today and back then, more than the competition. His intro music, although appropriate, is a little annoying. Note that the British History Podcast doesn't have medieval British music and its still cool, as a compare and contrast. Its a foreign enough culture to be very interesting.
Dan Carlins Hardcore History - Lower case L libertarian-ish episodic commentary on one event, sometimes across a couple episodes if complicated. If you hate his WWI discussion thats OK just chill till he discusses the Mongol Invasions, its like the weather, if you don't like it today, just wait a month.
Anecdotally, it's a lot easier now with 3g/wifi/4g than it was for the average person even a few years ago.
Also, you could argue that radio has become even less interesting as a medium in the last decade. Last, a lot of niche celebrities are doing podcasts now, so when you combine those things together, it seems like the makings of an interesting inflection point.
Actually having the ability to download podcasts over WiFi to an iDevice instead of downloading on a home PC via iTunes and syncing helps immensely by removing the ritual of the whole thing, and made regular listening easy because new episodes appeared when they were available.
I forget which version of iOS Apple offered a dedicated Podcast app and separated it from their regular music app, but it improved things greatly.
I heard that the team working on the podcasts app was one or two people.
In addition to the higher potential revenues from ads, from the standpoint of the listener, the DVR-like ability to easily skip ads has been built in from the beginning. Similarly, most podcasts have the ads entirely at the beginning or end, making them even easier to ignore (I doubt it will stay this way, though).
I also like the fact that I can download many, many podcasts ahead of time and have a huge library to choose from depending on my mood. The storage costs on modern hardware is negligible.
Lowering costs of high quality audio and editing equipment and software has to be a huge factor.
And let's not forget that a great many (close to all?) podcasts are free!
I do most of my listening in the car so skipping out on ads isn't exactly high priority. And I'll also say that the quality of ads is extremely high on most of the podcasts I listen to. Gruber's podcast and the Accidental Tech Podcast aren't just listing off a random pitch from some random company. They have discussions about the products, they've used the products themselves, most placements include discount codes, and advertisers have to love it. I actually don't mind the ads because they feel engrained into the show, it's a great model.
Stitcher app is my #1 used app. Highly recommended for podcasts. Also, a fantastic podcast not mentioned in this article is "Hardcore History" by Dan Carlin.
Another vote here for Hardcore History. Hands down one of the best podcasts out there right now. They're long - they're really more like audio books at this point - but just perfect for long car trips.
Even if you don't think you're interested in history, give it a listen because Dan makes it interesting. The current series on World War I has just been completely amazing.
I just got an iPhone and the built in Podcast app is pretty good. I have subscribed to a couple of the most popular podcasts and have been quite impressed by the quality these days. Last time I listened to podcasts was probably around 2007 or 2008 and the quality was poor and that put me off. Only a few people such as Adam Curry had decent equipment. Now it seems most people can afford decent kit and do a reasonable job at editing.
I've listened to podcasts since before the term existed. In fact I seem to remember "Gillmor Gang" episode in which they are discussing that there is a new term going around for this thing they've been doing for a while.
Same with IT Conversations, it started as MP3s in directories and then rode it all the way to a dedicated company (Conversations Network) and SpokenWord.org super aggregator. All gone now.
I've just recently started listening to more podcasts. I've listened to "Skeptic's Guide to the Universe" for years, but I think my favorite podcast currently is Dan Carlin's "Hardcore History."
For someone who likes old radio dramas (Suspense, Quiet Please, Night Beat), are there any good podcasts for modern audio drama? Serial sounds interesting, and is something I hadn't heard about before.
We're Alive (http://www.zombiepodcast.com/) is the only decent podcast audio drama I've heard. Other than that you'll have to stick with BBC adaptations.
I'm not sure what it is either. But I did just start really consuming podcasts this year, so I am a member of the consumption side of this Renaissance, even if I have no insight to the systemic patterns that caused it.
Any podcast recommendations for the HN crowd? I personally listen to Hello Internet (CGP Grey and Brady Haran) and Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project (Adam Savage and friends).
The shows use something called 'prep burger' which is prerecorded or prewritten comedy bits that multiple stations reuse, such as fake prank calls (real ones are illegal now). They buy access to a database of them and shameless reuse comedy bits with zero originality.
It's like mainstream pop music, the corporations have focus-grouped all the creativity out of the shows and keep everything within the safe confines of control and management. And I won't even get into their obsession for political correctness.
The days of Howard Stern or Opie and Anthony style talk shows are gone. Even XM Satelite radio talk shows have all been neutered.
This is why podcasts are new and interesting. The personailities are free to do and say whatever they want. They dont have management or producers telling them what audiences want to hear. So they create authentic and original content.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_zoo