The world of podcasting has been through something of a recent renovation – primarily thanks to Adam Curry (of the excellent ‘No Agenda’ podcast) and Dave Jones. Along with updating the namespace and RSS specification, they have also created https://podcastindex.org – a truly independent index of podcasts.
The advances here have much to do with the functional aspects of how podcasting works. Podcasting in general is at risk of censorship and ‘corporate’ oversight, as the largest current indexes of podcasts are run by Apple iTunes and Spotify. Apple has certainly been notable in recent years for censoring or outright canceling certain voices (ahem, Alex Jones…), and I’ve read plenty of articles reporting on the ‘woke’ staff at Spotify spitting the dummy when Joe Rogan dares to have on a guest who espouses opinions outside the bounds of their ‘tolerant’ political echo chamber.
So, having an independent index is a good thing, and Curry’s podcastindex (and the man himself) are, much as I am, committedly against the idea of censoring or ‘cancelling’ anyone. The correct response to speech that you don’t like is more speech – or being an adult and realizing that not everyone is always going to see things the same way you do, and you’re free to be offended, or even to simply ignore it!
My background before doing this crazy content creator caper was in IT, and I began in programming, so with the UnchartedX podcast I maintain and write my rss feed myself – it’s hosted on this website, as are all the mp3s of the actual podcasts. You can find them via the menu at the top of the page. I also add my feed to the big aggregators, Spotify, iTunes, and of course it’s in the new Podcasting 2.0 index.
One of the most interesting innovations in the Podcasting 2.0 namespace update is adding in the <value> tag. This allows listeners (who are using Podcasting 2.0 compatible apps to listen) to send microtransactions of crypto currencies to support show creators – which today is bitcoins, or rather satoshis (known as ‘sats,’ a 100 millionth of a bitcoin) over the ‘lightning’ transaction network. The namespace further allows the automatic split of any proceeds between hosts, or even in individual episodes, between hosts and guests. All baked into the standard! Sounds complicated? Not really, just use one of the Podcasting 2.0 compliant apps to listen to your favorite podcast, and send them some sats, the standard will take care of the rest. You can find a list of compliant apps at https://newpodcastapps.com .
If you’re interested in adding the new podcasting tags to your podcast’s RSS feed, you can find the spec here: https://github.com/Podcastindex-org/podcast-namespace/blob/main/docs/1.0.md
As of episode 25 of the UnchartedX podcast, we are also podcasting 2.0 compliant – although I’ve only just begun to play with the possibilities of the namespace changes. Exciting (and independent!) times ahead for Podcasting.