Does anyone else take issue with Spotify branching out into other arenas (e.g., Podcasts, TV, Audiobooks, etc.)? I'm honestly kinda tired of all of these services trying to gobble up any slightly related industry.
I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts. My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard. I don't want to get a subscription cost bump because Spotify has not decided they want to offer podcasts when I'm only paying for the music.
> Does anyone else take issue with Spotify branching out into other arenas (e.g., Podcasts, TV, Audiobooks, etc.)?
> I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts. My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard
100%. I will never touch Spotify Podcasts for that reason and that a number of the podcasts I listen to have specifically talked about Spotify's shitty/scummy practices around podcasts (like grabbing their audio and hosting it on Spotify's servers which cuts off the only traffic/demographics info that podcasts currently have access to). Anyone with half a brain would take one look at what Spotify is doing and run in the opposite direction. They don't care about the open nature of podcasts and they want to lure people in then put a wall up around them. If a podcast is only on Spotify it's immediately a podcast I don't care about because those podcast creators don't give a shit about the medium of podcasts, no self-respecting podcaster would walk into that lions den.
With this new move into audiobooks I need to seriously reconsider using Spotify. I've enjoyed using it (and paying for it) since launch but I'm sick of their gross moves and whiny-baby attitude (also after getting access to APIs refusing to implement them, really shows how full of shit their claims are). Maybe I need to look into 3rd-party Apple Music players since the AM app is some of the worst UI/UX for a music app.
> They don't care about the open nature of podcasts and they want to lure people in then put a wall up around them.
This is key. "Podcasts" and "podcasting" were created to refer to an open medium, but Spotify's intentional adoption and perversion of those words to refer to their proprietary platform has worked brilliantly. We're further down the embrace/extend/extinguish path than most people realize.
Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle?
And if you support paywalled podcasts, what, in your mind, would be the correct way for Spotify to implement them?
(I'm genuinely curious your answer, but to lay my cards and biases on the table: I prefer paid podcasts to the ad supported ones; I'm tired of hearing all the Casper and Squarespace ads woven into the content. And I have trouble imagining a typical Spotify listener (interested in, say, Joe Rogan podcast) properly moving a personalized premium RSS feed into another client without a ton of chaos and confusion.)
> Do you think there should be podcast that are paywalled, or are you against that on principle?
I have zero issue in paywalled podcasts, in fact I pay about $35/mo across various podcasts. Every single one of those gives me a special RSS feed with a token in the URL. There is no need for a service/platform to support this, it works perfectly today. A few of those podcasts are from Patreon and they have support for this built in (not that the "tech" behind this is groundbreaking). I almost always pay if it's an option because I abhor ads in every form.
I don't listen to many "mass market" podcasts, I think the largest podcast I listen to regularly (aside from some NPR ones I occasionally listen to) is ATP (Accidental Tech Podcast, which probably pales in comparison to the "Serials" and similar) and they offer a subscription ($8/mo).
Thank you for this comment. I was listening to Podcasts on Spotify think it would help get those podcasts attention. I'll switch away from doing that now.
> I'm honestly kinda tired of all of these services trying to gobble up any slightly related industry.
Vertical (acquiring as many steps in the supply chain to a business' core business as it can) and horizontal (acquiring as many related or semi-related functions as it can) integration has been the name of the game for as long as businesses were a thing.
One example I like to use is Temple-Inland, that started as a company that made boxes, was acquired into a company that made paper, bought another company that did forestry management, which turned into "we should have a real estate investment arm", and resulted in the country's third-largest mortgage lender in the early 80s.
We can be kinda tired of it all we want to but this is one of those competing interests between customers[0] and companies: the customer wants maximum flexibility for the lowest cost with the broadest range of features; the company wants the fewest costs for the most income with the highest amount of lock-in. Integration tilts the balance towards the companies so they will always pursue it.
0 - As an aside, I don't like calling people "consumers". We are customers; we "consume" service offerings, but (likely) we do so with intent.
In many cases, the word consumer connotes a legal definition that is different than customer.
For example, see the definition from Reg P: Consumer means an individual who obtains or has obtained a financial product or service from you that is to be used primarily for personal, family, or household purposes, or that individual's legal representative.
Spotify is a horrible podcast player. The audio engine doesn't have nuanced speed control or remove silence like other dedicated podcast apps. I also find the podcast UI is terrible for managing shows and play list.
And then there's the bugs that don't get fixed for a long time. Last year they had one where every time a podcast was interrupted by a notification or something it would start over from the start.
Lastly spotify podcasts that are exclusive are not, by definition, a podcast because they don't have a valid rss feed. You might refer to them as shows but calling them podcasts ignores how podcasts are supposed to work in an open interoperable system.
Canonically, yes. RSS is how podcasts are distributed, and why any podcast app can play any podcast.
However, Spotify marketing has bastardized words like "podcast" and "podcasting" by using them to refer to their closed, proprietary platform. That strategy is working brilliantly, and so the future of podcasting is probably proprietary platforms on one side, and bullshit "2.0"/Web3 stuff on the other.
I see the future of podcasting with a much brighter future than proprietary. Talk to the developers behind Podcasting 2.0 and see if they can change your mind; https://podcastindex.social/about
That depends on the service or app. Some accept both, and some only take RSS. Apple Podcasts used to accept Atom feeds, but they don't anymore for new podcasts. All the feeds
Edit: do you know any podcasts that use an atom feed? None of the 80 feeds in my podcast app are atom feeds.
I've been casual into podcasting and listening to the developers create Podcasting 2.0 and I haven't heard anyone talking about atom feeds. I think podcasting has firmly settled on rss.
Podcasting 2.0 is mostly about removing ads, shifting to a direct streaming monetary support model via crypto. The bonus with this model is once advertisers are removed free speech is no longer a problem. Also a big focus on decentralization in order to prevent censorship.
> The bonus with this model is once advertisers are removed free speech is no longer a problem.
How is it a problem now? RSS feeds already can't be taken down by angry third-parties, and offer perfectly usable decentralization. Advertising is entirely an at-will process for podcast hosts, so they can choose whether or not they want to shackle themselves to a third-party that might object to the content they spread. Connecting your podcast to a crypto wallet doesn't fix that, and it's nothing you couldn't do with preexisting XML syntax.
Even if Spotify adopted Podcasting 2.0, why would users care? Even as a technical guy, I want nothing to do with a crypto-adjacent monetization model. Podcasting 1.0 already solved these problems years ago, there's a good reason the major podcast players are wary of this "upgrade".
If you accept money from an advertiser and say something they don't like they can threaten to pull funding. Sort of like how none of the us "news" media will say anything against pharma, sponsored by phizer!
Direct support of shows by listeners is a much more honest relationship and liberating for podcasters but there is nothing in PC2.0 saying you have to use these features, it is simply enabling an alternate funding model. If you don't get the value for value principal in the first place it's not going to make sense though.
How is direct support limited in a traditional podcasting model, though? Nobody is forced to accept advertisements for their podcast. If you do, that comes with a risk that someone will stop paying you. With traditional podcasts you can still embed Paypal accounts/Bitcoin wallets if that's what you want.
I just fail to see how Podcasting 2.0 is a significant change over Podcasting 1.0. Everything you've listed already exists in RSS.
Paypal deplatforms people. They also don't have a way to stream revenue as you play.
I'm not a great ambassador for it but they are building the infrastructure to accomplish the streaming payments, boosts, cross platform chat, podping to get immediate notifications and reduce wasted polling, and a whole bunch of standardized metadata.
By the way the streaming payments also have value splits to support the show hosts, app used to play it, hosting platform, a guest that happens to be on that episode, etc, etc. Whatever they want. It's really impressive and no way can paypal match this.
> Paypal deplatforms people. They also don't have a way to stream revenue as you play.
Then don't use them. PayPal is not intrinsically linked to Podcast 1.0, it's just an example of how you can use any payment (including crypto) without upgrading to Podcasting 2.0 or whatever. Adding YouTube style feature is something, but personally seems like a lot of hubbub for little payoff.
None of this strikes me as an upgrade over RSS, even still. XML trumps the Blockchain for this sorta stuff.
I'm not sure there is anything in podcasting 2.0 about removing ads. I don't think the distribution protocol can do anything about ads that are baked into the mp3s on the hosting side.
You are correct, not forcing this on anyone. They are offering a solid alternative to ads with the streaming sats model. It's more in line with the principal of value for value.
>My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard.
I know a lot of people will disagree, but I think Spotify did a good job of handling the problem of "premium" podcasts.
There's no way to make a "premium" podcast (one you charge people to access) that is fully compatible with the original open vision of podcasting. You can either pervert the original RSS enclosures system by using obscure / personalized URLs for individual subscribers (a leaky abstraction that both discourages open sharing of feed URLs and fails to properly close off access) or you can pervert it by wrapping files in DRM (Apple's approach in the Apple Podcasters Program).
Instead of perverting the RSS feeds, Spotify opted to pervert (slightly) the term "podcast" to not strictly mean "in an RSS feed and listenable on any client." I think this was inevitable and arguably had already happened and is far better than corrupting the open ecosystem. It also happens to be far easier from a UX perspective to tell someone to just use the Spotify app.
For all the people upset at Spotify, consider the counterfactual: Why would they tell people to listen to their premium podcasts by copying a custom premium URL and pasting it into some random client (which 99% of the time on iPhones will be controlled by their bully Apple)? It is much clearer, easier for the user, and better for Spotify's premium creators (who don't want to lose listeners to a complex setup system) to just tell them "Listen to Spotify podcasts by downloading the Spotify app".
Under Spotify's system, some podcasters rake in Spotify money they wouldn't otherwise get, growing the premium ecosystem, while the open ecosystem remains robust and not polluted with more DRM and URL hacks. Keeping closed systems clearly closed and separate is much better IMO than trying to awkwardly jam it into the open ecosystem, undermining what makes that ecosystem great.
In what way does this "pollute" or "pervert" the open standard?
Apple and Spotify are companies, not people, this is not high school, Apple is not "bully"ing Spotify, they have a business relationship.
In general your comment is loaded with emotional language that seems to muddle the issue rather than clarifying.
I didn't consider HTTP basic auth as part of the open ecosystem because it's not, as far as I know, widely supported by clients. Is it? Maybe my assumption was wrong.
But it's also not part of the original "open" podcast vision because it is closed by definition, on an access level, and opens the door to tracking. Wouldn't most users in the open ecosystem be confused by an auth prompt? Wouldn't it be better for the open ecosystem if this sort of essentially closed feed just be cleanly inside Spotify (or whoever else's app)? This is my thinking, although I appreciate that opinions can differ.
I agree my language like "pervert" and "corrupt" can read as emotional, but I deployed it because I was trying to argue against the people who criticize Spotify using similar language, not to criticize anyone or raise emotions. If anything I'm trying to praise Spotify here.
As someone with a few Patreon feeds, yes it is widely supported, and the few that don't support it do support URL parameters so a token works fine as well.
Yes, as far as I concerned Spotify was basically perfect in like 2012, and most all of the features added (and _REMOVED_) since then have made the app experience worse. I want to listen to music. That's it. Anything that gets in the way of me doing this is a net bad afaic.
I'm still particularly offended by their near deprecation of support for local files. When I first got into Spotify the seamless integration with my local music library was a huge selling point. At some point, the app tried to help me by "linking" my meticulously organized concert playlists with studio versions of the songs... I have not been inspired to give that feature more time since.
I feel like I get closer to just getting an mp3 player again every day.
Used to be if you long pressed a song (iOS anyway) it would jump in a little and play for as long as you held it, going back to the music you were listening to when you let go.
Great for checking you've found the song you were thinking of and impromptu remixes to make friends laugh.
Annoyingly it was removed for "low engagement rate"[0]. I mean yeah, I found it by accident lmao. Maybe tell people about it?
I never knew they had it, but now that you mention it... I miss it also. When you just want to get an impression of the song without listening to the whole thing front to back, yeah very often I'd make use of this.
Honestly, I think the perfect music app that never existed is Pandora with the ability to play specific songs. I always found Pandora to a have a much better recommendation system and was actually happier and didn't play specific songs, just stations.
The only thing that made me switch was the Spotify family plan and multiple children asking for it. I've been unhappy with it for years, but can't bring myself to pay for two separate music subscription services, and also can't bring myself to listen to adds.
I have no issue with it business-wise -- if they don't, they'll eventually die because a podcast/audiobook app expands into music.
I just have a major issue with it UX-wise. I wish podcasts and audiobooks were their own separate apps. I've totally given up even trying to understand Spotify's UX anymore. I always eventually manage to play what I want through some combo of scroll/filter/search/history but I just feel like I never know what's going to appear anywhere this time.
And as long as I'm wishing... how about an app just for classical music too! Composer+performer just can't be satisfactorily shoehorned into a single "artist" field no matter how hard you try. Same as tracks aren't works -- a symphony might be anywhere from 3 to 40 tracks. (Keep classical music accessible in the main app for casual listeners, and because the line between classical and pop is blurry in some cases -- but just add a dedicated app designed for classical alone.)
> While I'm wishing, I've always wished they'd separate classical music into its own app too...
For what it's worth, a lot of Spotify's customers agree with you and have made third-party apps that try to do this. (I only know they exist but not how good they are since classical music is not my thing. But I kind of understand where classical music fans are coming from since a lot of electronic music, especially earlier works, is "mangled" in the same way.)
The two I know off the top of my head are Concertmaster and Tempso, if that helps.
I remember when they would prominently advertise Jordan Peterson right on the home page of their app. No other podcasts, just him over and over again while I've never used their app for anything other than music.
I contacted their support to ask how to remove these advertisements from the product I paid for, and they told me that this was impossible.
Impossible is a strong word, and installing https://github.com/spicetify proved that it was, in fact, possible to remove the ads for podcasts from their product.
No, I don't at all mind them trying to break the monopoly on audio books that is Amazon. (You can get them from the original publisher (not author/narrator) for 35 bucks, or 10 from Amazon. I'm willing to pay a premium for avoiding Amazon but I love audio books and I'm not as rich as Bezos.)
Podcasts was never a monopoly, but they're trying to make it one with the exclusive shows. That's what I hate. I have Spotify premium for music, so I could listen to those, but I unsubscribed from those podcasts immediately when they became exclusive. There's plenty more.
TV, I didn't know Spotify was trying to do, but same logic applies there.
Absolutely. But it's not really an expansion - they're trying to get people off of music and onto podcasts because those are cheaper for them to serve (so more like an attempt at not having to raise the subscription price).
I guess the idea is that all types of audio content have some commonality and somebody who's considering listening to music could also listen to a podcast instead. I don't think this overlap happens for me very often, but maybe it's more often than I think and often enough for them to be worth it.
I'll still boycott their podcasts because they're attempting to make proprietary what is currently free.
I ended up switching to Qobuz for this exact reason. I have nothing against podcasts, but what I wanted from Spotify was a great music app, and it's clear that that's no longer what they want to be.
(I also suspect that podcasts and audiobooks are more lucrative for Spotify than music is, since long-form content likely has a lower royalties/minute rate than music does)
I don't think I have an issue with Spotify, a music streaming platform, moving into streaming other audio types.
Afterall, Apple always had the Podcasts app and they make computers. So I don't think it's much of a stretch for Spotify. Perhaps if they branched into video I'd start to be concerned.
I quite like the fact that my music library and podcasts are all from the same app and I do find that Podcasts are less "in your face" than music.
Isn't it the case with almost every subscription service that there are aspects of it that you don't make use of? I feel like every subscription I have, from cellular to cable to Netflix, there's stuff I don't use that is part of the subscription. E.g., I don't watch horror movies, but apparently Netflix is still making them. Maybe I should take issue with it, but it just feels so mundane to me.
You're talking about genres, which is a different scenario.
This is more like Netflix raising prices for streaming subscribers to fund a new video-game studio. The fact that some people might enjoy both doesn't make them anything like the same thing.
I think it's just levels of granularity. Podcasts and music are both audio entertainment. It's like Netflix adding TV shows to their lineup of movies.
But the broader point is simply that in subscriptions to services you usually pay for some aspect of the service that you don't use and never have any intent to use -- and you can partition off that aspect of the service in a simple way (at least simple to you).
Car rentals and horseback rides are both transportation, but most people would say the difference is not trivial.
Movies, tv, and video games are all visual entertainment, but video games are different enough that most people are generally not happy about the idea of raising the price of Netflix to finance a video game studio. Art museums are visual entertainment as well, but raising the price of Netflix to build art galleries in select locations wouldn't fly well, either.
In this case, Spotify is doing anything but partitioning off podcasts. As many comments here reveal, most people are seeing podcasts pushed heavily in their music interface.
I want them to absorb the whole ecosystem. Podcast apps suck and I am absolutely never using itunes. I'm glad I can get podcasts I like in Spotify and it will track across my phone / pc my progress. I don't listen to audiobooks but would buy them from Spotify if I did so I don't have to download and figure out some kind of Amazon Audible app instead.
I wouldn't bother me at all if they didn't neglect the existing features. It used to be the most responsive music app to the point where they made a documentary about themselves now it it's everything but that - crashes, buffers, freezes, every sort of bug is present where it wasn't before.
I think they have to get some kind of exclusive content. Either they somehow start recording hits and start a war with other streaming services for popular tracks or they have podcasts which I guess are sort of supposed to be like the catalog that video streaming services are trying to build.
Exclusive content is the only way they (or any streaming service) can become profitable. With recorded music, they have to pay a revenue share to the artists and Spotify's percentage does not increase as they grow. With exclusive content, however, they pay once and as the audience grows the additional listeners are pure profit. So, the goal is to increase the percentage of owned content consumed on the platform and give less of the subscription fees to the record labels.
The exclusive tracks model does not work for music artists because they want ubiquitous distribution. Music is unlike video in that people consume the same content over and over again, and also unlike video in that the artists make the big bucks off of live performances.
This is why SiriusXM can pay Howard Stern $100M per year and still be wildly profitable. It reduces their dependence on royalty incurring content.
i mean there's not actually that much $ in a commodified streaming service. royalties eat most of it and artists still aren't paid that much. so branching out is spotify's only hope of finding a high-margin area of business.
i don't have a problem at all with that. I consume everything on spotify. However what bothers me is Spotify playing victim here, when we know that if Spotify was in Apple's position, they would probably do the same.
It's fine if they branch out, but they abuse their users with popups, and by not being able to hide these extra features. I just want to listen to music without having to repeatedly tell them that's all I want to do.
The only thing that’ll make me do is badger the folks at Tidal and other streaming co’s to create a proper alternative to Spotify Connect that works on my Yamaha hardware.
I subscribe to Spotify to listen to music, not podcasts. My podcasts arrive using a different app with the backing of the RSS standard, not Spotify's internal standard. I don't want to get a subscription cost bump because Spotify has not decided they want to offer podcasts when I'm only paying for the music.