[MDWolinski]

It’s amazing how little analytics there are on podcast listening by default as a standard that all apps should provide. Stuff like if an episode was started, marked as listened (but not actually listened to), etc.

I get the reason for this change in general and the idea behind it, although this still gives inflated numbers for a minimum of 5 episodes.

[Vvector]

Please no. I don't want to be forced to use a special player to listen to podcasts just so analytics can be collected

[adhesive_wombat]

But if we put it on The Blockchain, you can mint PodCoins by listening to podcasts! Of course, to ensure you're really listening, you'll also need a secure cryptographic module installed in your auditory cortex. Depending on how well that surgery goes, maybe it finally can put the killer in killer app.

[kombookcha]

This is the wrong kind of cyberpunk, I was assured there would be USB-key knuckledusters so I could punch 1337haxX into corpo terminals.

[MDWolinski]

No, I fully agree, the idea being that there’s a standard set of analytics and a way to report on them that apps can openly support.

Granted the odd ball out would be Apple and if they’d support the analytics in their podcast app, but much like Apple’s podcast directory is the defacto directory, there’s an opportunity for a better, OPEN, solution.

EDIT ADD: I’d be surprised if every podcast app doesn’t already collect a robust amount of analytics on listening, they just don’t report it where podcast owners could see easily.

[api]

The reason podcasts are so great as a medium is that they have not yet been “platformified” and many still just distribute with RSS.

Do not enshittify podcasts.

[brnt]

Spotify took a dear podcast of mine 'private' (it has since been freed). Some have their own paywalls. Even some 'smaller' podcasts now feature network leaders. Many thus feature localized ads.

Not sure we're not already on that path.

[dugite-code]

> Some have their own paywalls

Nothing wrong with paying for a product. A common method is a private patreon RSS (Atom) feed. It's still an open standard but the podcast earns money. It's at least a better option than the path Spotify took.

> Many thus feature localized ads.

I'm not against dynamic ads per-say, but it really reminds me of TV with the Ad's being wildly irrelevant to me and often being significantly loader than the actual podcast

[gsich]

RSS is a RFC MUST for it to be called podcast.

[kartoffelmos]

Do you have a source for this?

[philipwhiuk]

https://www.reddit.com/r/AlignmentCharts/comments/xldke8/wha...

[coffeebeqn]

These are common events used by the ad industry as well

[ironmagma]

There's a beauty in the fact that Podcasts are decentralized and built on RSS. Let's not ruin that.

[dwighttk]

That is because a podcast is just an rss feed of audio files… to get that sort of information (from all your listeners) you have to add to rss and break compatibility.

[theshrike79]

I think we have the capability in RSS since the age of blogs and RSS aggregators.

Basically the aggregator can grab the main RSS feed and tell the server "I'm not just one person, I'm actually serving this to {subscriber count} people" and the server can use that information if it wants to.

[astro19238_]

What about spotify? Their model should be strong if the others don't count streams.

[gerikson]

That kind of reporting has clear privacy implications. I'd avoid any client that reported those metrics.

[FrustratedMonky]

Pretty Sure Netflix has this, though only used internally.

[rimunroe]

I’m sure they have incredibly granular information about exactly where in a video most people spend their time watching, where they stop watching, where they pause, where they fast forward/rewind, and probably more. As a company which has first-party content, it would be shocking if they weren't collecting it.

Some porn sites (i.e. PornHub) make info about where people spend the most time watching available in the UI in the form of a small graph over the seek bar at the bottom of the video. Even though the adult entertainment and sex work industry has historically been a pioneer of new tech, I don’t think they’re alone in tracking that stuff.

And I’m not thrilled about any of that. I’d be upset if my podcast app started reporting more info. I don’t really care about the specific privacy implications of knowing which podcasts I listen to, but I do care about the loss of privacy in general, especially because some people might be potentially more affected than me.

[philipwhiuk]

YouTube also provides the graph to creators.

[dwighttk]

and sometimes viewers

[karaterobot]

Does... Netflix do podcasts now?

[FrustratedMonky]

No, just commenting on how streaming of any digital content, the source company is tracking hundreds of data points on each person.