i’m assuming it’s somehow part of the “do you have new episodes” polling mechanism that makes subscription meaningful… but i don’t have any actual knowledge of how it works at a technical level.
it’s from what i remember having read ( heard, really ) but i wasn’t able to find the source to link to. so it’s also possible i’m mistaken
Yes, if you were using an Apple device and had subscribed to a show the default settings would automatically download the most recent episodes in the Podcasts app.
Same here. I’ll usually bank at least a week’s worth for the gym and pool (podcasts make exercise bearable for me). I use Podkicker for Android, which does the job well enough. I wouldn’t count on Apple or Google for that feed.
Next you’ll tell me that the pivot to video was bunk
Never will happen. Because all those app owners get to monetize all the tracking data they get from your phone by having an app instead of a website.
Or if they’re tiny, then google or meta monetizing the data from their low cost or free app tools is how the app developers can afford to throw it together.
Not to mention, big companies have been trying really hard to undo this for Podcasts. NYT/NPR, Spotify, and I think Stitcher all try to go around RSS into their own app. The reasoning is more granular listen data (play/pause counts. Did you listen all the way through) and more dynamic ads.
I know you know this, but oh boy is that misguided.
The whole point of podcasts is that you can consume them while not looking at a screen. That’s why I started listening to them two decades ago.
Yeah, Gen Z might be more into video as a medium, but if that’s the market they are trying to reach they misunderstand their audience demographics, which are almost entirely Millennials and the tail end of Gen X. Plus, podcasts are long-form, which is not a Gen Z -friendly format. They will never compete with Tik Tok, so why bother?
Well, Stitcher is dead, thankfully. But I’d add BBC Sounds to that list. And yeah, Spotify presumably use their own delivery methods like they do with music. I hope advertising data like this will make Spotify drop their podcast venture and it goes back to being a mostly homebrew industry. That’s the appeal, the low barrier of entry.
Yeah, I was referring primarily to Facebook’s “cooking the books” on video streaming stats. It skewed the industry for a few years and seems comparable to the questionable metrics (downloads, not hours listened) suggested here
BoingBoing could get that author to blog for them, sounds like they would fit right in with the happy mutants here ;]
Our plug their blog
There has been a podcast pivot to video as well, though, which I thought you were referring to.
I imagine BBC Sounds has to be somewhat walled in, because they have podcasts which are just recorded radio shows, with licensed music, and I assume they have to keep within that licensing (eg only downloadable for 30 days or whatever).
Seems like this will particularly hurt smaller producers.
Yeah. BBC sounds has the news (also known as Small Boats Half Hourly bleat) interrrupting their shows as well as music. So their desert island discs on Spotify has a very short snippet of each song after the host and guest talk before each piece.
Amazingly they don’t manage to shoehorn immigration and SMALL BOATS CRISIS! into that.
Unless they have since found away to do it since I accidentally listened to one.
Oh! No, I wasn’t aware of that. I agree, it seems to ignore a unique strength of the format.
This Article had many factual errors. Key is in what the change actually was and what it affects. It was not about Apple Podcasts stopping downloads if a listener goes 5 episodes and 2 weeks not listening to a show. That has ALWAYS been how Apple Podcasts worked. That is NOT new.
The change Apple made - had to do with how they handled older episodes. In iOS 15 - Apple intro’d a bug or feature depending on who you talk to that once a paused podcast is restarted - it would go back and start downloading ALL unplayed episodes - not just those that you missed since last playing, but ALL unplayed. So if you started listening at episode 700 and listened to Ep 750 - then did not listen again to Ep 800 a few months later. It would try to download eps 1 to 699 and eps 751 to 799. In iOS 17 - Apple changed it to no longer download older episodes that were not played. It just unpauses that show and continues from the most recent moving forward.
That is the change. Which means new episodes - have NOT been impacted. This change impacted shows with large back catalogs the most. And again did not impact per episode numbers. What you thought was your unique audience size did NOT change.
There were multiple other items in the article that were not accurate as well. Overall - this article was not well researched.
This won’t affect most of the podcasts I listen to, as most of them seem to be funded by Patreon or similar platforms. I say “seem to” because I live in Finland, and there are very few auto ads on podcasts around here, but they are increasing.
Over about 5 years, I’ve skipped 8 days and 17 hours of ads, with the majority being for other podcasts. In that same 5-year span, I’ve listened to 418 days and 4 hours on one app, not to mention countless hours on other apps.
I listen to “It Could Happen Here,” which releases 5 episodes a week. It transitioned to a daily format in August 2021, run time so far 20 days and 3 hours. Since I don’t listen to music, podcasts are my primary sanity saver at work.
