The Minor Role Podcasters Play In Podcasting's Power Dynamics

For a DIY, creator-first, indie-friendly medium as podcasting is, it’s shocking how little control you, the podcaster, have over the podcasting experience.

October 13, 2020

Article

Every week, if not every day, it seems like a new uproar has flared up somewhere in the podcasting ecosystem. Some breakout torches and pitchforks. Some clutch pearls. And a scant few say “Well, that’s an interesting position I hadn’t considered before. Let me give that some thought.”

But what strikes me as I read these articles or pitched Twitter fights isn’t the voices entering the fray. Instead, It’s the continual realization of just how little control podcasters have as publishers of the content that without which there would be no podcasting at all.

Yes, I realize that podcasters have near-ultimate control of the content they make. There’s no FCC or equivalent governing entity breathing down the necks of most of us, leaving us free to do and say things on our podcast episodes that we want to say.

But our control ends as soon as we’ve mastered our .mp3 files. After that, we cede control to other entities. Entities with their own goals, incentives, positions, and perspectives on what podcasting should be.

Podcast Media Hosting Companies Have More Control Than Podcasters

Unless you’re one of the vanishingly small podcasters who self-host, you likely upload your mastered .mp3 file to your podcast hosting company. They in turn propagate your media file across their content delivery network (CDN) and update the RSS feed for your show, allowing your episode to be distributed to various listening points, actual and potential. They also likely provide an embeddable player to be used on various webpages. They might send posts to your connected social media accounts automatically. And in a growing number of cases, they’ll use direct connections and API calls to send your episode to bigger platforms.

You, the podcaster, have almost no control of this. Yes, you can control what content goes in some of those fields. And you may have selected which distribution points would be in the chain. But the technical aspects of how much of that transmission of data happens are obfuscated.

Perhaps rightly so. We have to trust the podcast hosting company to act in our best interest and take care of the low-level bits so we can stay focused on making great content. If we wanted to have 100% control, we’d roll our own hosting and RSS solution. But for most of us, that way lies madness!

But that means we’re ceding decisions to the company we’ve chosen as our podcast hosting companies. Not just some decisions. Most of them. Decisions that might impact our listeners. Decisions that might limit our ability to work with partners. Decisions that we don’t get a say in.

Podcast Listening Apps Have More Control Than Podcasters

With a few notable exceptions, most podcast listening happens via listening apps. Most of the time, the app is created by a third party. And all of the time, it’s the listener who makes their own choice as to which app they will use.

We podcasters really don’t care which app listeners use, since we’ve done our level best to ensure our podcast episodes are distributed everywhere a potential listener might choose to listen. That's the kind of decentralized democratization we want in podcasting.

But listening apps and the companies who make them are the ones that own the relationship with the listener. Not us podcasters. Not our hosting providers. The makers of the listening apps have much direct information about and control over our listeners than we podcasters do.

When you think about it, you realize that you don't have any control over how your podcast episodes are displayed in a listening app. Yes, everything displayed there is pulled from your podcast’s RSS feed or from a direct connection with your podcast hosting company, and you control what info you plug into the hosting company to describe your episode.

But they're pulling data from the RSS feeds and direct connections of over 1.5 million podcasts. They have to display content in a uniform way so that it looks what they think of as “best” for their customer - your audience. Do you wish they’d display your subtitle more prominently? Or that they’d use the episode-level artwork you painstakingly create to give your listeners a better experience? Dream on, podcaster.

The listener experience in podcasting is controlled not by you, but by the listener’s chosen listening app. And if you think that experience is shitty, you have little control over getting your listeners to switch to a listening app you think does a better job of properly displaying your content the way you want your content displayed. Tough titties, as my mom would say. Switching costs are just too high for most listeners, and your listeners probably listen to more podcasts than just yours, and they’re not about to put your desires over their needs.

Brewing Battles Over Podcasting’s Power Dynamics

Of course, there are other entities beyond podcast hosting companies and podcast listening apps who also take part in power dynamics. I’m limiting this article to just those two, mostly due to ubiquity. That, and I don’t want to depress you even further.

Conflicts in podcasting’s power dynamics - past, present, and likely future - break down into a few common areas.

Privacy and security of listener data is a big and important topic right now. And you, as a podcaster, have almost no control over how your podcast impacts someone’s privacy and security.
Metrics and analytics are rather important to our success, but we’re stuck just receiving what the hosting companies and apps provide us. Sometimes, when we try to use third party sources to help us better understand, we’re shut down by entities with more control than we have.
Standards and conventions can influence or inhibit both of the prior points and have a big impact on the listener’s experience. But we’ve no power beyond adding something to a suggestion box.

What Role(s) Will You Play, Podcaster?

I don’t say any of this to depress you. Though, granted, it is rather depressing. Sorry about that. But while I do think we’re outclassed by the true power hosting companies and listening apps have over the podcasting process, we’re not without options.

As podcasters, I think we have to choose a position to take. Specifically, we need to choose what kind of minor role we’re going to play, And then play it as loudly as we can. Here are five I came up with, though I’m sure there are more:

Activist Podcaster

I clearly fit into this role. What is Podcast Pontifications if not my own outlet and outreach vehicle to make podcasting better? As an activist, I have positions on every single power dynamic and pitched battle mentioned previously. Many of those spill over into articles like this. Others are incorporated in various advisory roles I’ve assumed within the podcasting industry. I think we need more activists. But like any good activist, I’d prefer more activists who take a similar stance as mine.

Podcasting Apologist

The vast majority of podcast hosting companies and makers of podcast listening apps are good people doing what they think is best. They need podcasters on their side (apologists is a lousy name but here we are) to defend their actions and spread their message. I often play this role, especially when the actions of those I support run counter to conventional ways of thinking. So if you really love the approach one or more of these entities take, wave their flags proudly.

Podcasting Insider

Maybe, either as part of or in conjunction with being a working podcaster, you work for one of these service entities. If so, you can apply pressure from the inside, exercising a little (or a lot) more control than the rest of us have.

Podcasting Outsider

Perhaps your profession is tangentially related to podcasting. Or maybe podcasting has spilled into your area, as it keeps expanding. You’re in a unique position to not only bring an outside perspective, but you’ve likely seen how similar power dynamics have shaken out and are able to offer some assistance.

Uninterested Podcaster

Or maybe you're uninterested in these arguments and you just want to make great content that your audience enjoys. I totally understand that. There are many days when I want to do that same thing as well. Congrats on making it this far in the piece!

I’m not trying to push you towards one role/position I’ve laid out. Honestly, I think it's a spectrum. I know I ride most of these roles from time to time, and I think you probably do as well. I think it’s a good start to understand where our power limits are, but also what roles podcasters can play to affect some changes in our chosen medium.

I’m rapidly approaching “Evo’s long winter's nap” time, where I take a much-needed break from the show for the month of November and December. Last year, I opened it up to guest voices who wished to pontificate on my platform. I’m doing that again, so please reach out if you’d like to contribute and we’ll talk about your idea. I’m easy!

Please go to BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra to support the show, and please tell a friend about Podcast Pontifications.

See you tomorrow for another Podcast Pontifications.

Cheers!

Transcript

PPS3E46 The Minor Role Podcasters Play In Podcasting's Power Dynamics - Transcript

[00:00:00] For a DIY creator. First in the friendly medium as podcasting is it's shocking. How little control you the podcaster have over the podcasting experience.

hello and welcome to another podcast. Pontifications with me, Evo, Tara. You know, every week, if not every day, sometimes it seems like there's a new [00:00:30] uproar somewhere in the podcasting ecosystem. And this week, today is no different.

And what it really strikes me is as I, as I read these articles and I see these battles or whatever else that's being thrown around out there, I'm, I'm struck with what I said at the beginning. I'm shocked when you start peeling things back at how little control we have as [00:01:00] publishers of the content that without which there would be no podcasting.

And you may think that's funny and weird because hold on Eva. I, I do what I want on my show, man. I don't have the FCC breathing down. My guy, my neck or whatever country regular I can do, I can say and do things that I want. True. Not discounting that, but instead, but with the, you know, say whatever you want, but you gotta have somebody listening to it.

And for a lot of people [00:01:30] connected in the middle to very specific groups that are connected in the middle that have a lot more. Control then you do as a publisher. Let me explain again, you have control of the content you produce. Most of that is, is true. The vast majority of the times, it's the podcaster, unless you've got your own internal challenges you can do or say whatever you want on your show and let the chips fall where they may.

I agree with that 99% of the time. [00:02:00] There's a handful of times where we have some automatically generated content that I don't think podcasters are either aware of, or certainly aren't exercising. Good judgment on. But regardless of that, let's just say, I agree. Podcasters have the control of the content they produced, but it's the podcasters hosting company.

The people who are responsible for. Generating the RSS feed and hosting the media files, making the embeddable [00:02:30] player that you can use on your website, perhaps even controlling some of the social aspects of distribution and sometimes distribution itself by having direct pipelines between the hosting company and one platform or another, they, the hosting company.

Control all of the technical aspects of that. You, you don't get a say podcast or an order you want to say, really honestly, you don't get a say in the technical aspects. And [00:03:00] the thing I want you to think about for a moment, one of those technical aspects is security security of the information that is being exchanged.

You can't choose to do something more secure because again, you're just creating audio content. Somebody else. Has to create that additionally of security and you trust your podcast, hosting providers to do that for you. Then there are the listening apps themselves, because look, [00:03:30] having a podcast hosting company is great.

You got an RSS feed and a place to host your file and yes, a player on your website. But realistically, we all know as podcasters here that the vast majority of listen happens through an app somewhere. And that app oftentimes is not controlled by the hosting provider. It's another third party that the listener has chosen you, the podcast you get to choose your hosting provider.

They, the listener get to choose the app. And that's the democratization that we want around podcasting. [00:04:00] But those listening apps really, we own the power and the relationship with the listener, not you, the app themselves has much more direct information on the listener and the control of the listener than you do.

And when you think about it, you don't have any say in how the listening app displays your content, because they're just pulling your content from your RSS feed. Like they're [00:04:30] pulling all other 1.5 million podcasts from their RSS feeds and they do things in a uniform way, any changes you want to, the way it displays, you have to go back to your hosting provider and hope that they are doing things properly.

To make modification, go into your own content and change that, you know, they really control almost a hundred percent of the listener experience. When you think about that listener experience of podcasting is by and large controlled all within that [00:05:00] listening app, which we don't have a lot of access and control over, and you want to switch away from that and you think get your listeners to switch away.

If there's a bad actor out there. Good luck. High switching costs. Moving from podcast. True. A podcast listening app to podcasts listening app, even though the RSS feed is open and free, it's still a pain. Not a lot of people want to do it. So these fights that we're seeing right now and we've seen previously, and of course, we'll see again in the future [00:05:30] really are around a lot of different aspects, but when you boil it down, it really comes down to four things that these fights break down to privacy and security is one arguably.

The most important privacy and security of data of listeners, of what they're listening to, how they're listening, other information they might get. It's a big battle, a lot of battles. Raging on privacy, security, ongoing arguments, over metrics and analytics. What counts as a download? Do we care about downloads?

No. Um, [00:06:00] other aspects that come to measuring and tracking the effectiveness of podcasting, lots of fights about this. There's also standards and conventions. How do we modify this thing called an RSS feed? What do we uniformly understand to be good metrics? What sorts of files are we allowed to be inside of an RSS feed?

And how should we deal with those, all those standards and metrics, alter standards and convinced standards and conventions are important. Most matting, most [00:06:30] maddeningly are the arguments surrounding what is, and isn't a podcast and I'm not going to even jump into that fight because that's really, really dumb.

So. The point of all this, the reason I'm bringing this to you here is what do we do as podcasters? That minor role that we have during this, during these power dynamics struggles that are out there. I think we have to choose a position and I've picked five different positions. There might be more, [00:07:00] but I think there are five.

So the first one is the position of being an activist. I clearly fit into this. Role. I play the activists all the time. I have a position on every single thing I talked about and I will have more positions on them. Now, do you, as a working podcast are also want to take an activist role. You don't have to, but you might want to, you might also become the apologist.

The person who has preferences, [00:07:30] who accepts and trust some people doing certain things a certain way and will try their best to get everybody else to follow along with it. You know, being an apologist for these companies. I have a little bit of that. Well, I certainly have some preferences and I certainly understand why things are done certain ways.

And I want to make sure I'm raising those flags and waving them proudly when I possibly can. Maybe you want to change things as an insider, maybe you're a podcast or working for one of these other service entities that I mentioned. [00:08:00] Maybe you're working to make some modifications to changes from the inside.

Maybe you're an outsider. Maybe you are tangentially related to podcasting. Then you bring others experiences and skills from other industries to the mix, because you've seen how this power dynamic shakes out and you want to offer some assistance. You can do it as an outsider. As well, or maybe more likely you're uninterested, all of these arguments don't really matter.

[00:08:30] You just want to sit back and make content that your audience enjoys. I totally understand that there are many days when I want to do that same thing as well. So I don't know that I'm pushing you towards one way or the other, which of these positions. I honestly, I think it's a spectrum. I think I ride most of those at some particular point.

And I think you probably do as well. It's good to understand that. What are the, what roles do we have? What can we do? Because we can [00:09:00] make some effects. We can affect some changes, even though we don't have a lot of power in this power dynamic struggle of podcasting. So I'm going to wrap up with three things this time.

I know three things. Hey, egos, long winter's nap is coming up. You know, I take off November and December, right? That's coming up. And once again, I'm opening up the show to other working podcasters who would like to have this show as a platform for them to share their thoughts and ideas, not self promotional stuff.

You [00:09:30] know what I do here? This is all about philosophy, future thinking ways to make podcasting better. If you've got an idea about that, you want to collaborate on something, reach out to me, Evo at what do you want to change it to? No, just send it to this is evo@gmail.com. That's a simple thing to, easy to find me on Twitter.

Everywhere else. Please go to buy me a coffee.com/evo Terra. To support the show and tell a friend about podcast pontifications that's it. See you tomorrow for another podcast. Pontifications cheers. [00:10:00] .

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