<story><title>How Spotify&apos;s podcast bet went wrong</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/02/12/2023/how-spotifys-podcast-bet-went-wrong</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cccybernetic</author><text>Meh, you can call it value extraction if you want, but ultimately they&amp;#x27;re paying these people. Didn&amp;#x27;t Rogan get like 100MM? Didn&amp;#x27;t they fund a bunch of studios and new podcast creators? From the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Its drastic cuts have triggered a podcast winter, as the small studios it helped support consolidate and lavish narrative productions wane&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, I&amp;#x27;ve tried 4 different podcast players and found Spotify&amp;#x27;s player to best of the bunch. Controls work like you would expect, it&amp;#x27;s very snappy, search and sorting are also polished. I&amp;#x27;ve pretty much stopped listening to Podcasts on Apple&amp;#x27;s native app because Spotify&amp;#x27;s superior experience.&lt;p&gt;I do get what you&amp;#x27;re saying about RSS feeds though, but it&amp;#x27;s not quite as black and white as you make it.&lt;p&gt;Edit - updated wording:&lt;p&gt;+ &amp;quot;found Spotify&amp;#x27;s player to best of the bunch&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- &amp;quot;they&amp;#x27;re all terrible except for Spotify&amp;#x27;s&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; Anyone else see the irony there? Without middlemen? Spotify was trying to cement itself as the middleman in as much podcasting as possible, right? Or maybe it&amp;#x27;s not irony, it&amp;#x27;s exactly that, Spotify saw a space without middleman and thus an opportunity to lock itself in as the middleman.&lt;p&gt;Yep, it&amp;#x27;s not irony, but is instead a common corporate play: if you see a space with a lot of value to extract, you move in and start extracting.</text></item><item><author>jrochkind1</author><text>&amp;gt; By 2021, Spotify had paid to sign some of the biggest names in podcasting, and it was ready to start squeezing its competitors… Now, Spotify chief content officer Dawn Ostroff — a TV veteran most famous for bringing Gossip Girl to the CW — was ready to stop many of these creators and companies from sharing podcasts on Apple and Amazon, and keep the content exclusively on Spotify.&lt;p&gt;I have noticed Spotify trying to funnel a decentralized podcasting ecosystem based on RSS into their own walled garden, with some pretty big plays -- it would be really encouraging if they fail at this! I sure hope so. And that nobody else can pull it off either.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The company saw podcasting as a rapidly growing space without middlemen.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else see the irony there? &lt;i&gt;Without&lt;/i&gt; middlemen?  Spotify was trying to cement itself as the middleman in as much podcasting as possible, right? Or maybe it&amp;#x27;s not irony, it&amp;#x27;s exactly that, Spotify saw a space without middleman and thus an opportunity to lock itself in as the middleman.&lt;p&gt;Of course it&amp;#x27;s not over yet, and Spotify remains in the game, along with others trying to capture podcasting in walled gardens.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The company said in 2021 that it overtook Apple as the biggest platform in podcasts, and the company is similarly neck-and-neck with SiriusXM as the biggest podcast network, making the company both one of the biggest producers of podcasts and the place where most people listen to them</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Adraghast</author><text>&amp;gt; Also, I&amp;#x27;ve tried 4 different podcast players and they&amp;#x27;re all terrible except for Spotify&amp;#x27;s.&lt;p&gt;You’re the first person I’ve heard with anything positive to say about their podcast UI, so I’m really curious what those four are.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Spotify&apos;s podcast bet went wrong</title><url>https://www.semafor.com/article/02/12/2023/how-spotifys-podcast-bet-went-wrong</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>cccybernetic</author><text>Meh, you can call it value extraction if you want, but ultimately they&amp;#x27;re paying these people. Didn&amp;#x27;t Rogan get like 100MM? Didn&amp;#x27;t they fund a bunch of studios and new podcast creators? From the article:&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Its drastic cuts have triggered a podcast winter, as the small studios it helped support consolidate and lavish narrative productions wane&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Also, I&amp;#x27;ve tried 4 different podcast players and found Spotify&amp;#x27;s player to best of the bunch. Controls work like you would expect, it&amp;#x27;s very snappy, search and sorting are also polished. I&amp;#x27;ve pretty much stopped listening to Podcasts on Apple&amp;#x27;s native app because Spotify&amp;#x27;s superior experience.&lt;p&gt;I do get what you&amp;#x27;re saying about RSS feeds though, but it&amp;#x27;s not quite as black and white as you make it.&lt;p&gt;Edit - updated wording:&lt;p&gt;+ &amp;quot;found Spotify&amp;#x27;s player to best of the bunch&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;- &amp;quot;they&amp;#x27;re all terrible except for Spotify&amp;#x27;s&amp;quot;</text></item><item><author>masklinn</author><text>&amp;gt; Anyone else see the irony there? Without middlemen? Spotify was trying to cement itself as the middleman in as much podcasting as possible, right? Or maybe it&amp;#x27;s not irony, it&amp;#x27;s exactly that, Spotify saw a space without middleman and thus an opportunity to lock itself in as the middleman.&lt;p&gt;Yep, it&amp;#x27;s not irony, but is instead a common corporate play: if you see a space with a lot of value to extract, you move in and start extracting.</text></item><item><author>jrochkind1</author><text>&amp;gt; By 2021, Spotify had paid to sign some of the biggest names in podcasting, and it was ready to start squeezing its competitors… Now, Spotify chief content officer Dawn Ostroff — a TV veteran most famous for bringing Gossip Girl to the CW — was ready to stop many of these creators and companies from sharing podcasts on Apple and Amazon, and keep the content exclusively on Spotify.&lt;p&gt;I have noticed Spotify trying to funnel a decentralized podcasting ecosystem based on RSS into their own walled garden, with some pretty big plays -- it would be really encouraging if they fail at this! I sure hope so. And that nobody else can pull it off either.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The company saw podcasting as a rapidly growing space without middlemen.&lt;p&gt;Anyone else see the irony there? &lt;i&gt;Without&lt;/i&gt; middlemen?  Spotify was trying to cement itself as the middleman in as much podcasting as possible, right? Or maybe it&amp;#x27;s not irony, it&amp;#x27;s exactly that, Spotify saw a space without middleman and thus an opportunity to lock itself in as the middleman.&lt;p&gt;Of course it&amp;#x27;s not over yet, and Spotify remains in the game, along with others trying to capture podcasting in walled gardens.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; The company said in 2021 that it overtook Apple as the biggest platform in podcasts, and the company is similarly neck-and-neck with SiriusXM as the biggest podcast network, making the company both one of the biggest producers of podcasts and the place where most people listen to them</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>budu3</author><text>The Google Podcasts app works for me. It has a minimalist feel to it.</text></comment>