Unlocking the Potential of Fiction Podcasts: A Call to Podcast App Developers

If you’re a regular consumer of podcasts, you may have noticed a change over the past few years: many of the world’s most popular shows (and maybe some of your favorites) have started including the ability to watch instead of simply listen. While video podcasts are not a new concept, they’re quickly becoming mainstream and will soon represent the m... See more

Think about Spotify’s podcast business as an example. A few years ago, the streaming audio giant evolved from being only a music service to being one for other categories of audio, such as podcasts. Given the content and experience differences between music and podcasts, many hoped the company would launch a dedicated podcast listening app to offer... See more

The draw of audio apps over other traditional formats is obvious to any podcast (and music) devotee: the ease. That lean-back, hands-free experience means that audio apps generally don’t compete with a vast competitive library of other startups. Instead, they compete with washing dishes, working out, driving.

Trade-offs Since adopting RSS saves podcast listening apps an enormous amount of time and money by not forcing them to reinvent the way content flows through the podcasting ecosystem, it means the barriers to finding an audience for these apps is lower. As a result, many of these apps exist, and thus a tremendous amount of market fragmentation has ... See more

Don’t get me wrong. I am fearful of a Facebook-like algorithm that chokes my podcast off from those who subscribed to it. Just as I sometimes get nostalgic about the old school blogosphere from a decade ago, I’ll no doubt look back at the open podcast ecosystem and miss parts of it. And I’m not super excited about a future where I have to toggle be... See more

Review the short history of podcasting and you’ll find a few seminal moments. There’s the format’s invention, of course, quickly followed by its official inclusion in the Apple iTunes directory. Then there’s Apple’s 2012 rollout of a standalone podcast app that was featured on the home screen of over a billion iPhones and iPads. Finally, we have th... See more

RSS has also been instrumental to enabling the consumption side of podcasting. Virtually all of the world’s podcast listening apps that exist in the world of podcasts (such as Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and many others) support the ingestion of RSS-powered podcasts. The benefit of doing so is huge: if a podcast listening app adopts this sta... See more

The trouble with podcasts is that they are difficult to grow: while text can be shared and consumed quickly, a podcast requires a commitment (which again, is why advertising in them is so valuable).