If Spotify Is Focusing On Tools For Podcasting, I Have A Suggestion…

Spotify is looking to ‘provide more tools to people who are producing podcasts‘, in which case I have a radical solution for them that will allow them to fully embrace podcasting.

Support RSS feeds from your catalogue.

Allow your podcasts to be listened to by any client app, not just your own. Allow your users to?import and export subscriptions through OPML files. And contribute your innovations to the open economy by adding clearly documented namespaces?much as Apple?did when it thought that having a link to a podcast’s artwork would work well in iTunes. Those innovations can become standards,?

Podcasting started as an open space with open standards. It remains that to this day, with countless contributions of content, hardware, software, and services, all keeping podcasting open while creating value and income for themselves.

This is where a line about “rising tides” would fit in nicely.

I’ve been critical before of Spotify’s approach to serialised audio. It pulls in from this open economy and locks it all away inside its proprietary service. You can listen to podcasts in Spotify’s service, but try and move these podcasts elsewhere and you’ll find you can’t. Want to take away your subscribed podcasts to copy them into another service? You can’t. Want to leave Spotify but also take your memories? You can’t.

Spotify has spent rather a lot of money to try and dominate and be the single player in the podcasting space. With a reported spend of over $1 billion, the independent spirit of podcasting has not died. perhaps it’s time for Spotify to be a good neighbour.?

Originally posted at ewanspence.co.uk, Monday 18th June...