The Podcast Index
podcastindex.orgI'm building a language learning app based on podcasts and I used "The Podcast Index" first but, as I understand, The Podcast Index is not currently scraping Apple and many of the podcasts in their index are dead. For better or worse Apple podcasts is the "de facto" index of podcasts, so I had to build my own podcast index based on itunes data.
You can see a comparison of the different indexes (indices?) at https://podcastindustryinsights.com/
Isn’t the entire idea of the podcast index that they aren’t relying on a single platform for their source of truth? Podcasts are decentralized by design so in theory all links to podcasts should be scrape-able in some way (just as Google scrapes websites). One of the sites the podcast index should scrape is Apple, but it should by no means be limited to a single platform.
The decentralization works against discovery. For the longest time I couldn't find many DOS gaming podcasts. Then I happened to search Spotify. Lo and behold there are more there, and their recommendations helped find adjacent podcasts. Of course Spotify is a walled garden, so I have mixed feelings.
Full disclosure, I work for a company that provides a paywall to podcasters. (Among other things.)
I use podcast index exclusively for podcast search and I've never been unable to find a podcast I was looking for there (just my experience in having used it for years)
My personal experience is, the second one I tried gave me a miss.
Just curious, what podcast was it?
I recently also wanted to play around with some itunes podcast data. But it seemed Apple removed the scrapable catalogue index of their podcast library. How did you build up your database, if i may ask?
There are a lot of dead podcasts in general. It's tough to sustain a podcast and many people give up after doing a handful of episodes.
The restriction against allowing @gmail accounts to sign up is kind of insane.
Probably to discourage spam
that's bass-ackwards reasoning. i can sign up with 500 <randomness>@<my domain> emails
Only they know the patterns that spammers have used in their case. Perhaps if you did use random usernames on your domain then it would be blocklisted too.
What kinds of, well, censorship, is applied to the platform for a lack of a better word?
Maybe I wasn't able to scan the Terms of Service well enough, since I didn't see it defined there? They mention they can remove content there, but not why they would.
Anecdotal, but I know the guys behind this. They're about as much free speech absolutists as you'll find. They're not going to remove anything unless it presents a large legal problem for them not to.
The idea of the index is to prevent censorship
The better word is "content policy"
4 million podcasts. That's an order of magnitude more than I'd have guessed. A quick search shows other sources estimating 5 million.
Well, I'm guessing I have two podcasts in there, one of which is completely inactive and the other of which I haven't published anything new to for well over a year. There are a lot of podcasts out there that are pretty inactive and some were only intended as being limited series in the first place. So, yeah, if the universe of discoverable podcasts is 4 million it wouldn't surprise me at all if an order of magnitude fewer are creating new content. (Though older content, e.g. for The Big Dig limited series can still be historically noteworthy.)
Podcasts should be thought of as limited runs, not like never ending radio programs. That's just the reality, regardless of the original intentions.
I think the move to announced seasons is a good middle ground. It tempers expectations and gives creators a break or stopping point.
There are definitely podcasts that are of historical interest. I mentioned the big dig one. My former company also did some computer-related podcasts that are sort of evergreen, e.g. related to Soul of a New Machine. There are also ones related to speculation about some current TV show that mostly have a pretty short shelf life.
But agree generally. I think if I were to undertake a new podcast, I'd probably use seasons. Gives a good point to decide, nah, I'm done with this topic. Otherwise, the natural path is to just peter out.
I'm not sure how you solve discoverability other than personal recommendation from someone with similar interests. As noted, there are a ton of podcasts out there and many won't overlap with your interests, others are largely or wholly inactive, others are poorly produced, etc. The fix, such as it is, is probably to have a podcast reviewer who isn't in it for payola, who overlaps with your interests and sensibilities who makes recommendations on a blog.
There are some great docs here for using the API: https://podcastindex-org.github.io/docs-api/#get-/search/byt...
Really like what the Podcast Index is doing, especially with pushing Podcasting 2.0 (https://podcasting2.org/) and value for value! Just wish I could do v4v in currencies other than Bitcoin.
V4V is a concept and not a technology.
It's simply that the podcaster provides something valuable to you with their podcast and you're expected to return an equal amount of value back to them in whatever form you choose. It could be a Paypal payment, cool artwork for the show, topic research for the show, or whatever value you can contribute back.
Check out value4value.info for a more detailed explanation
Not really that useful if I can't sort based on last publication, nor see how many episodes a given podcast has published when searching.
The idea of the index is it acts as an API for apps to build search and other things on. It can do some searches but ya know what I mean.
Also no search by episode titles.
I love podcasts but discoverability is simply awful on Apple Podcasts, not to mention the rampant enshittification. What's better in their list of apps?
To discover new podcasts, I often search on https://www.listennotes.com/ for episodes about people or topics I find interesting.
I mainly listen to audio dramas. I find reddit the best place to get recs either that or I give advertised podcasts in ones I'm listening to a try.
I've been trying to get back into listening to podcasts over the past few years and something I've found is that the means of delivery is split. You can't rely on being available to subscribe to 'textbook definition' RSS based podcasts, it could also be on apple, spotify, youtube, an embedded player on their website, or any combination of those.
For me the best way was always personal recommendations from friends, sometimes also if a host of one show was a guest on another one.
I tried to build a better way to see what my friends are listening to with https://lastcast.fm, but I've since shut down the project.
Overcast is popular, but I would say its UI has also become worse over time:
But its less about discovery than tracking your library and playing them back.
Give it some time—Marco just radically re-architected the app and is in the process of iterating the UI rapidly. He just added the ability to swipe in the main card again for example.
I don't know if it has become worse but it has some UI quirks that confuse me from time to time.