I Don't Want Your Podcasts, Spotify!
One of the most annoying things about Spotify is just how hard they push podcasts on their platform, it’s pretty annoying that a site intended for music has most of it’s main page filled with podcasts, but what makes it worse is the fact that Spotify pushing podcasts on their platform is actually quite malicious.
Podcasts have always been fairly decentralized, the best way to listen to podcasts is undoubtedly through a podcast client and RSS feeds. This means that not only are podcasts DRM-free, but they’re also decentralized as most podcasts come from different sites, Spotify seeks to change this.
You see, Spotify’s podcasts are not only centralized on their servers, but they’re also locked down with DRM, that means that Spotify seeks to take complete control of the podcasts on it’s site, they also want to make sure that you’ll be locked into the Spotify ecosystem.
You might argue that none of this matters as most podcasts are still distributed through RSS, the problem however is that Spotify have the money to buy exclusivity rights to podcasts, and they have spent several million dollars doing just this to make sure that the most popular podcasts are only available on Spotify.
Now of course Spotify isn’t the only company to try and destroy the open nature of podcasts, Apple are doing the same thing with Apple Podcasts, but I’d argue that they’re somewhat less malicious since they don’t actually host any podcasts themselves. But much like Spotify, you can’t export your podcasts for use in another program with Apple Podcasts, so it’s clear that they’re trying to lock you into their ecosystem.
As an internet community we need to reject this attempt to lock down the open ecosystem that is podcasting, or else risk loosing one of the last popular decentralized methods of accessing content. So cancel your Spotify, dust off your DRM free albums and RSS feeds and enjoy some freedom!