I love the quote “no matter where you get your podcasts.” Whenever I hear a podcast host say this to promote their show, I celebrate.
Much of the internet is ruled by a few would-be monopolies who force you to use their apps to access what you want. Podcasts could easily go the same route. The phrase "no matter where you find your podcasts" is a fact that proves otherwise - a rare success for the open web.
When you talk about the best podcast apps, you don't talk about which shows are available where, like you would with a streaming service like Netflix or Disney Plus. Instead, you talk about the actual functionality the app provides - the user interface, of course, but also things like transcripts and changing playback speed. Lifehacker considers PocketCasts the best podcast player, but there are more options that may be better for you. You can use your favorite apps based on functionality. This is how the web is supposed to work.
The surviving corner of the open web
Now, podcasts aren’t the only online content that works this way. Email is still relatively open - for example, Gmail users can send messages to Outlook users, and both can contact people using their own email servers. This is because email is built on an open protocol that anyone can implement.
Likewise, podcasts are built on RSS, a protocol established in the early 2000s. Tech-savvy people like me like to tell you that the Internet would be better if we ditched social networking and used RSS. The internet as a whole likes to ignore this advice—except for podcasts. When it comes to podcasts, everyone has a favorite app, and they're all a little different. And, most importantly, the difference isn't in which shows you get. There's something worth listening to on every podcast app.
Spotify tried and failed to build a walled garden
Tech and media companies don't like how things are going. Spotify is trying to change the open nature of podcasts by buying up popular shows and making them available exclusively to its closed platform. The company has spent about $1 billion acquiring companies and locking their shows so they can only be viewed on Spotify. That's why I have to use Spotify to listen to what is objectively the best podcast, Jonathan Goldstein's Heavyweights , even though the Spotify app is a pretty terrible app for listening to podcasts.
Now it looks like Spotify's work in this area isn't all bad. They may have made the world a little better by removing Joe Rogan's content from YouTube and most podcast apps, thereby reducing his influence. All jokes aside, though, the way things are going suggests that Spotify's attempt to take over the podcast business is a complete failure. Podcasting as a medium reaches the most people when the show is available on as many apps as possible.
We may be heading towards a more open social media landscape
I think the open web is making a long overdue comeback, and we can look at how that happens via the podcast: You need a durable protocol that allows anyone to distribute to many different applications at the same time. Something like this feels perfect for social media. Heck, this is already happening in some places.
I happen to believe that ActivityPub, the protocol that powers Mastodon and other social networks, can push - and is already pushing - things in the right direction. Threads users can now join Fediverse; Automattic, the company that now owns Tumblr, also plans to eventually launch ActivityPub integration; and any WordPress site can become part of Fediverse by installing a simple plug-in.
Now, this system is flawed. The situation is more complicated with Bluesky, a federated social media network built on a completely different protocol that currently does not interact with ActivityPub in any way. That could change - there are third parties working on the connection - and there's nothing stopping Bluesky from eventually bridging the protocol. However, this has not happened yet.
Plus, the Fediverse is full of drama that you may remember from the forums in the 2000s. For example, some people are now very excited about Threads becoming part of the Fediverse, while others are very worried about the eventual undoing effect Meta, the (evil) company that owns Threads and Facebook, may have. Some large instances completely block the thread. Like any online community, drama like this keeps happening.
Even so, I think the idea behind ActivityPub is promising. Over time, this could make social media become more like podcasts. In this world, you can use any app to follow and interact with anyone on any other app. This is the version of the internet I prefer than our current system, which is dominated by four social networks, all of which feature mostly screenshots of the other three networks.
