Pod or Not

Many people watching the tech media space have commented on the fact that the definition of podcast is slowly changing. The original definition was that a podcast is an audio blog that publishes what's called an RSS feed, essentially a specially formatted text file, which lists each episode with its name, description, and most importantly, the location of the corresponding media file, which is usually an audio file. So a feed like that can be added to and then automatically queried or played through pretty much every podcast player, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, whatever, there are dozens. Well, the Spotify, Spotify, the app, it used to be a music app, and now it's both a music and podcast app. And it just so happens that the company behind this app started stirring the pot in 2020, 21, when it began acquiring both podcast production companies and tech startups in the space. And most controversially, it signed a gazillion dollar contract with Joe Rogan, who prior to that signing of a contract had been duly publishing an RSS feed compatible with every player out there. But post contract, he made his show a Spotify exclusive show, meaning that he would stop publishing an open RSS feed and make his program playable only through Spotify. And that's what they pay them his gazillion dollars for, to make you go and use that app. So that created a somewhat absurd situation in which the most popular podcast out there, and by most general agreement, I think, the Joe Rogan Experience is the most popular podcast, is technically not a podcast. It's, it's just an exclusive show on a specific platform, playable only through one player. Well, he also puts his videos, short videos on YouTube, but that doesn't really matter. Like the full content is Spotify exclusive. And speaking of YouTube, YouTube got into the game too. And it started muddying the waters by claiming that some YouTube programs with videos uploaded to YouTube and playable only through YouTube are also podcasts. So there's this whole terminological singularity that is emerging, where almost anything that's personality centered in multimedia, and comes out periodically, regardless of the genre format, distribution, almost anything like that can be called a podcast. And now there's video podcasts, there are podcasts with RSS feed without an RSS feed, exclusive to one platform, all of that is called a podcast. Where I'm going with all this is that I wanted to say that I'm more than just a disinterested observer, I guess I'm more of a participant in this kind of melee. We're making tools for you to publish something that is very, very similar to podcasts. In fact, it's so similar that you can almost call it a podcast and be absolutely honest. Because by the definition of the old definition, the presence of an RSS feed makes it a podcast, you can just create your Gromco audio blog. And once you have at least one post, you can go and there's going to be a button on your profile that says export in RSS. And you can go and grab that RSS feed and submit it to Spotify or Apple. And if they accept you, which I don't see why they wouldn't, you'll find yourself in in their apps. And if they even if they don't accept, you can still sort of hard import it into most players because you have the RSS feed. But it's actually not my point. My point is that we're playing in this field, but we're nudging you in a slightly different direction. That direction involves shorter, more off the cuff episodes. And importantly, with one additional cool feature, which is the ability to incorporate listener responses in audio, almost as part of your program. I mean, to the extent that you want to do it, assuming you do that podcast that you can start with Gromco would be sort of a collaborative effort. Would it be still a podcast? Well, what do you think?