I heard a YouTuber say today, "We are now available wherever you get your podcast; that means that an audio format of the show is now available on both Spotify and on Apple Music/Podcasts,“ and, like…isn’t the contradiction of the first half against merely 2 (technically 3) locations not glaringly obvious?
Like, I get that most people don’t conceive of things on their computers, anymore, in terms of files and there’s a convenience to going to a centralized service to browse for a particular thing (podcasts, in this case) but…it’s still annoying that we’re shoving things which still, currently, – with relative frequency – can be accessed not behind proprietary, paywalled locations into these locations that’re beyond collective control.
It’s at least pretty cool that the statement is true enough most of the time to be in wide use. The walled gardens continue to expand, and the situation will get worse. But by and large podcasts are pretty open and accessible in a decentralized way.
I know Spotify is grossly proprietary, but is Apple’s new service too? For a long time it seems like being on iTunes or whatever meant they also had an open RSS feed for podcasts clients?