[rickdeckard]

Off-topic: Would be great to have a way again to simply share links to podcast-episodes which work regardless of the used app.

Before the podcast-hype one could simply share the direct-link to the audio-file.

Now all you get are links which require Google/Apple/Spotify to open.

(But realistically, I don't know who would be willing to drive this. It would need backing from at least Google/Apple/Spotify to maintain a central catalogue, and the incentive seems to be low...)

[cxr]

> Would be great to have a way again to simply share links to podcast-episodes which work regardless of the used app.

There's nothing stopping this from happening today except for app developers not putting any UI for it in their apps. HTTP has a Link header (which servers should already be sending, whether apps actually do anything with it or not), RSS has a field to link to pages, HTML has `link` elements (and the `rel` attribute for `a` elements) to link back to the file, and audio file containers of course let people include metadata.

So linking to a podcast episode is as simple in principle as giving someone a URL directly to the file or the associated episode page. (It's a URL. That's it. Done.) It's getting application authors and server operators to do their part, though, which is another matter.

[tantalor]

I would assume that's not too hard given most podcasts use RSS or similar for distribution.

Whether each individual episode is a separately entity (like, with a distinct URI or whatever) within that format, I don't know.

[rickdeckard]

It's not that trivial to do as an end-user. If I listen to a podcast on Spotify which I'd like to share with you (who doesn't use Spotify), I would have to Google that podcast and try to find a RSS-Link for it, which becomes more and more difficult as most pages now link directly to Spotify or Apple and provide no RSS-url.

Ideal would be an URI like podcast:// which apps could simply register for on OS-level, but I frankly don't know which entity would actually want to drive such a standardization.

[cxr]

> Ideal would be an URI like podcast://

No, that would be far from ideal, for the same reason that the feed[1] URI scheme was flawed (cooked up by very confused people) from the beginning. And among other things, a podcast:// URI would now mean I can't open the thing in my browser unless my browser vendor adds support and I download the new version.

The file is served over HTTP(S). Just use the http or https URI. Podcast players need to do their part[2] in dealing with them.

1. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feed_URI_scheme>

2. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37691360>