This blog is part of my 38 before 38 series. I write a blog for every single day for the 38 days leading up to my 38th Birthday.
As with the term “content”, podcast has taken a life of its own. What began as a decentralized way of distributing media, mostly audio, to your iPod has become an amorphous blob of opportunists, grifters, celebrity vanity, and traditional talk radio people. It has become synonymous with “two dudes with a microphone talking about things they have no business talking about.”
Which is a shame. The original decentralized nature of the technology allowed for many different types of ideas and formats to flourish. They still do. By restricting this to a genre, we are limiting who can access them, and who will access them. Giving this over to political hacks outrage farming restricts what a podcast listener is.
This is not to write off talk shows. But the most popular ones have the same target demographic, regardless of political affiliation. By limiting to this demographic it is also killing the viability of anything else being made for anyone else.
This also threatens the decentralized nature of the technology. Apple always had somewhat of a monopoly, but anybody can make a client. Podcast is a collection of basic web technologies that can be easily integrated any where. With forcing these technology to be a shorthand for this one type of programming, we give power to the big tech monopolies. Google, Spotify, and Apple have no interest in maintaining this decentralized ecosystem.
Which is why they force their own proprietary tech. They even have the gall to call shows that are ‘exclusive’ to their platforms as Podcast. It can’t be a podcast every podcast client can’t access it. Pretending otherwise gives these monopolies even more power.
I know I am sounding like a cross between a trademark lawyer and old crank. I do not object to the latter label. I have seen the web going through the same cycle of centralization and enshittification. I have been enlightened, informed, and entertained by various podcasts. I don’t want this to happen to this technology as well.