- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.smeargle.fans
[…] being able to say, “wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.
What podcasting holds in the promise of its open format is the proof that an open web can still thrive and be relevant, that it can inspire new systems that are similarly open to take root and grow.
Could someone explain to me (I’m a developer so use whatever terms you like, maybe), how does the massive amount of podcasts reach the world? Say if I wanted to make a podcast app (I don’t, I love Pocket Casts), where would I sync the massive list’o’casts? Does it work like that? Or do you scrape the entire internet? What is happening?
The protocol used for it is a bit of an older protocol, but basically it uses the RSS protocol. It came out in the 90s and hasn’t been updated since 2014, and I haven’t touched any code related to it since before 2019. Otherwise, it’d just be standard HTTPS for websites like Spotify etc and whatever podcast discovery system they have on their site etc.
Does the protocol have its own name?
iTunes api, and if apple turns evil there are other list-o-cast apis like fyyd.de.
Whoever downvoted this has no clue. The Apple Podcast directory is currently unrestricted for any podcatcher to crawl and to get the RSS feeds. That may change at some point but for now it’s actually the best maintained RSS feed directory. The aforementioned fyyd.de is a good but less complete alternative. It relies of community submissions. fyyd.de itself is not an open source service, though.
Lolol yeah like that could EVER happen! /s
Compared to Reddit or Twitter anyway, they haven’t killed their API yet so apps like pocket casts are mainly using iTunes for search
Ah-ha. Interesting. Thanks!
Are you sure about this? I was under the impression there were several aggregators out there who all sort of shared data, iTunes just being one of them. Maybe you are totally right, but if you are that sort of undermines the original post, which is saying that the podcast ecosystem doesn’t depend on any one company/org.
Maybe if Apple realizes they have this running somewhere behind their mountain of money.
Apple has been evil since day 1. When have they done any single thing that wasn’t evil? The EO is family a terrible, wireless person. I’m so confused what you mean.