This is hilarious. Google is trying to leverage it's search & mobile OS market positions into pushing people towards its podcast app. Unfortunately for Google it has come up against one of the few entities in the world that can just turn around and say "Fuck. That."
Frankly, I think this is a monopolist tactic from Google and it should result in government investigations but I have no hope that will happen. Nice to know people like the BBC have the balls to say no to this though.
What's hilarious is that the reason is Google is pushing back on sharing user analytics with BBC. For another company it'd be the pinnacle of respecting user but you just seem biased against Google so there's nothing they can do to please you it seems.
All other services (Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple, etc.) serve podcasts on their own properties but if Google does it it's monopolistic. To me such claims about Google have become too overused and have lost their meaning.
I don't blame BBC though for sticking to their guns because they really want user analytics and think have the weight to pull out. The justification they provided is just misleading.
In the UK how do you compete for news eyeballs and try and make it pay when the BBC news is for free?
Imagine your business is weather forecasting, the same applies.
Then there is the small matter of the license fee. Most people just pay it out of fear of being caught by one of the legendary detector vans. But you can't have a TV or a monitor that also does TV without being hassled for the rest of your days.
It is getting that way online. I only listen to the BBC on DAB radio, if I sign in to their player thing I know I can't trust myself not to watch some lame series on iPlayer meaning I will have to pay up.
The BBC has an important propaganda role in informing the national conversation and keeping British people British. I am not saying that cynically, that is what the voice of empire is there for. They aren't trying to sell you product, it is more subtle than that, essentially propaganda though, controlling the latitude of available thinking.
They need to be more careful about closing down their reach as people like me go off-piste and start listening to stuff that would never make it onto the BBC. Once you have done that and realise the world thinks differently to the allowed BBC viewpoints there is no going back.
I don't see this as the BBC standing up to the monopolistic evil Google, I also think the BBC are not whiter than white.
Technically speaking the way Podcasts work is a fascinating thing.
Most on HN May be familiar with this already but Podcasts are completely open and a creator simply publishes an RSS that they then provide to a podcast App such as iTunes so it can appear on the Apple podcast app. In exchange most of these podcast apps share any listen counts and analytics with the owner of the Podcast. However, almost always the files are hosted by the owner so the plays could also likely be counted that way. Even the artwork and everything is provided with this RSS that is completely open.
More and more platforms are popping up creating “exclusive” podcasts and trying to close the ecosystem down. Not sure if that’s what is happening here, it’s unclear from the article, but just think Podcasts are one of those last few technically open things on the internet and that’s great.
They are so open in fact I was planning on adding them to my audio App I’ve been building which lets people listen to any article right now. The more this closes up the less of an opportunity for people to create useful things and for people to find new ways to stay informed.
As a shameless self promotion if your interested in having articles read to you on the go try my app https://articulu.com
Admittedly I don't consume a massive amount of podcasts but I don't have a problem with this move towards a more closed platform. If people want to make money from their work as podcasters they basically have three possibilities: beg for donations, ad tons of ads before, after and often in the middle of the podcasts or move to a subscription model (which means the podcast is no longer available for free).
Since I vehemently despise ads I have no issues with the subscription model as long as it remains convenient to play the audio any way I feel like (i.e. no intrusive DRM).
So I actually think that's a good evolution overall, I wish more of the internet moved away from ads and towards other monetization models.
For your audio app I suppose that it'll mean that you'll have to strike a deal with the podcast platforms to share some of the revenue or figure out an API to let people use their license keys on third party players. I understand that it's annoying but that sounds perfectly fair to me.
Probably is a drive from the BBC itself into a closed DRM platform. Their BBC Sounds app is woeful. License fee payers are treated like complete dirt. Being charged multiple times for the same content. It's about time the BBC just became a subscription service. Older content should just be left on Torrents, and be available for re-sampling. They are absolute cretins.
While Google & FB gobbled up the juiciest chunks of online media, podcasts have somehow remained one or of the freeiest media, imo working like the open web was supposed to.
Ooh, it's kind of surprising. Discovery is still clunky. Getting from website to subscribed can be clunky. It's not interactive or conversational. Advertising is tricky. Podcasters generally have to negotiate deals separately. There are no clicks and podcasters can't really do the ad targeting that makes most online ads valuable. There isn't a deep analysis of pauses and abandons, like in google.
OTOH, there are no content policies. No "demonetization." No spying on consumers. No clickbait. No seo... and for the most part no rulers.
Even the clunkiness of discovery is half-feature. You ask friends what they listen to, and that mode of slow-and steady distribution makes for better incentives.
Meanwhile, Google and the like look at podcasts and see a piece of unclaimed territory like late stage empires and an island that wasn't worth bothering with 100 years previously.
I don't know why BBC pushes it's sounds app so hard. I get nagged to use it every time I listen through Alexa too. There's no BBC sounds smart speaker so why do they care? What do they gain from me using the app?
While I understand the objections to Google self promoting their products and masking audience data I don't see how removing their podcasts from one of the most popular platforms helps with what the BBC claims to be important.
"What we think is important is pretty simple. We want people to have easy access to the wide range of BBC programmes, not just a select few, and be able to discover and listen to new ones really easily."
Cutting off your audience potential to understand your audience better is some kind of broken logic. The comments section highlights that their own audience generally does not accept their reasoning.
Wasn't this in the article - searches for BBC content is going to Google not the BBC. If they remove content from google, searches will go to BBC where they can display more than the limited range Google show.
If Google Podcasts has gone from non-existence to being "one of the most popular platforms" in a matter of months, its actually an insanely good reason not to engage with them at all.
Having worked at the BBC several times it’s yet again insular thinking.
In short, they’ve spend a load of (wasted cash) on a proprietary app that is useless, but some “strategy” dork - who’s never actually built anything - thinks he can get Google to change.
Good luck with that.
The thing is, generally, they iterate quickly and it becomes less crappy over time. This has happened with lots of their products. Everytime the News frontpage got changed everyone lost their shit, however if you look back now at the older designs you see it was a falacy holding on to them. I'm not saying Sounds is perfect (there's been some vitriol), but it wouldn't be out of the ordinary if it improved based on feedback.
I really like the BBC Sounds app, I know it holds a selection of high quality content that I like, as opposed to a firehose of any old thing like google et al.
I agree with the navel gazing and blinkered thinking prevelant at the Beeb.
I tried the BBC Sounds app, once I learnt about their intention to phase-out the excellent standalone iPlayer Radio app. The sound quality was markedly worse for live radio and coupled with a haphazard UI/UX - the app just got deleted. Also, there is no dearth of apps to consume podcasts e.g. I use the native Podcasts app on iOS and Deezer/Spotify on Android. BBC Sounds does not bring anything new or radical to the table.
I tried a few podcast searches through Google chrome desktop and Android and I don't really see what the big deal is. The first search result link is the podcast website, and the top few buttons integrated into the results page are just listing episodes and series and such, the same way done for movies, books, etc.
I listen to all the BBCs podcasts through the Apple Podcasts app. Is there something that stops the Beeb getting meaningful statistics when it it is played via Google, but allow it to get those statistics when played via Podcasts.app
A lot of the comments on the page address the fact that the BBC sounds app isn't available outside the UK so switching isn't an option. That seems like a pretty serious oversight...
Ah, that explains why I had a complaint from the wife that she wasn't getting new Archers episodes.
(The Archers is a long running (since 1951!) BBC Radio 4 soap opera about a fictional farming community. There are a lot of people addicted to this, including the wife.)
I had to avert this disaster as a wife with no Archers isn't worth contemplating, so I installed the BBC sounds app instead. It was my thought that the BBC pulled the content from google to get people using the BBC Sounds app instead.
The BBC Sounds app works, but it is a pretty terrible podcast app (2.2/5 stars on the Google Play store), it doesn't download and queue things, or let you order them etc.
Nice to see the beeb telling Google to "get in the sea". On a tangential, but not unrelated note, I'm kinda frustrated with the way podcasts are increasingly being distributed these days. So many sites push their content out to the likes of Stitcher or iTunes or some other third party service that try and force you to use an app or their crappy website. In many cases the option to download just the raw MP3 has quietly disappeared.
Just let me download the fricken MP3, I don't need some stupid ad plagued spyware to listen to a podcast. I realise sometimes this can be about monetising your content to help pay for production costs. But you know what? I'm happy to pay, and already do to some folks via Patreon/Paypal etc. Just don't force me to jump through hoops to eventually locate the raw MP3 that I can listen to on my own terms.
Looks like it may have just been cached, a few minutes ago at approximately 9:28 Eastern my podcatcher of choice just downloaded the episode, even though pulling the RSS through my browser still does not show the episode.
Additionally, the podnews article linked in other comments indicates this is just a trick with robots.txt, and does not appear to impact the actual function of the podcast.
Anything that isn't an RSS feed that serves MP3s, and therefore can't be synced to an offline media player, isn't a "podcast", and shouldn't be called such. If they can just remove their show feed from Google's program, then it's probably not an open/standardized RSS feed, and Google's program probably isn't a podcast program as we know it.
Podcasts are great because they're essentially open and standardized, and I can sync them with bloated desktop programs like iTunes, FOSS programs like Antennapod, or even command-line interfaces like Newsboat. DRM and arbitrary gating of media behind proprietary technologies just makes it worse and blocks it off from so many people.
This is all just about adverts. The BBC is gearing up to include ads in podcasts served to users outside the UK (some of you might have noticed them on their podcasts, I've heard them on a few episodes/podcast with no discernable pattern [they might be A/B testing]). The BBC needs listening metrics for this to be the extra revenue stream they hope for as well as being able to change out the ads for individual streams.
[+] [-] Traster|7 years ago|reply
Frankly, I think this is a monopolist tactic from Google and it should result in government investigations but I have no hope that will happen. Nice to know people like the BBC have the balls to say no to this though.
[+] [-] jamescridland|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Navarr|7 years ago|reply
They're splitting it into "Google Podcasts" and "YouTube Music"
[+] [-] gerash|7 years ago|reply
All other services (Spotify, SoundCloud, Apple, etc.) serve podcasts on their own properties but if Google does it it's monopolistic. To me such claims about Google have become too overused and have lost their meaning.
I don't blame BBC though for sticking to their guns because they really want user analytics and think have the weight to pull out. The justification they provided is just misleading.
[+] [-] peterhadlaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Theodores|7 years ago|reply
In the UK how do you compete for news eyeballs and try and make it pay when the BBC news is for free?
Imagine your business is weather forecasting, the same applies.
Then there is the small matter of the license fee. Most people just pay it out of fear of being caught by one of the legendary detector vans. But you can't have a TV or a monitor that also does TV without being hassled for the rest of your days.
It is getting that way online. I only listen to the BBC on DAB radio, if I sign in to their player thing I know I can't trust myself not to watch some lame series on iPlayer meaning I will have to pay up.
The BBC has an important propaganda role in informing the national conversation and keeping British people British. I am not saying that cynically, that is what the voice of empire is there for. They aren't trying to sell you product, it is more subtle than that, essentially propaganda though, controlling the latitude of available thinking.
They need to be more careful about closing down their reach as people like me go off-piste and start listening to stuff that would never make it onto the BBC. Once you have done that and realise the world thinks differently to the allowed BBC viewpoints there is no going back.
I don't see this as the BBC standing up to the monopolistic evil Google, I also think the BBC are not whiter than white.
[+] [-] lbacaj|7 years ago|reply
Most on HN May be familiar with this already but Podcasts are completely open and a creator simply publishes an RSS that they then provide to a podcast App such as iTunes so it can appear on the Apple podcast app. In exchange most of these podcast apps share any listen counts and analytics with the owner of the Podcast. However, almost always the files are hosted by the owner so the plays could also likely be counted that way. Even the artwork and everything is provided with this RSS that is completely open.
More and more platforms are popping up creating “exclusive” podcasts and trying to close the ecosystem down. Not sure if that’s what is happening here, it’s unclear from the article, but just think Podcasts are one of those last few technically open things on the internet and that’s great.
They are so open in fact I was planning on adding them to my audio App I’ve been building which lets people listen to any article right now. The more this closes up the less of an opportunity for people to create useful things and for people to find new ways to stay informed.
As a shameless self promotion if your interested in having articles read to you on the go try my app https://articulu.com
[+] [-] simias|7 years ago|reply
Since I vehemently despise ads I have no issues with the subscription model as long as it remains convenient to play the audio any way I feel like (i.e. no intrusive DRM).
So I actually think that's a good evolution overall, I wish more of the internet moved away from ads and towards other monetization models.
For your audio app I suppose that it'll mean that you'll have to strike a deal with the podcast platforms to share some of the revenue or figure out an API to let people use their license keys on third party players. I understand that it's annoying but that sounds perfectly fair to me.
[+] [-] scarface74|7 years ago|reply
I think the issue is that you put the emphasis on “exclusive” instead of “podcasts”.
If it isn’t delivered over an RSS feed that I can subscribe to in my podcast player of choice, it’s not a podcast.
[+] [-] rbinv|7 years ago|reply
This was even mentioned to you roughly a month ago by someone else:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19287119
Didn't seem to have much of a lasting impact on you.
[+] [-] keypress|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djhworld|7 years ago|reply
It already is happening, some podcasts on BBC Sounds are exclusive to BBC Sounds (albeit for a time limited period)
[+] [-] jccalhoun|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anc84|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dalbasal|7 years ago|reply
Ooh, it's kind of surprising. Discovery is still clunky. Getting from website to subscribed can be clunky. It's not interactive or conversational. Advertising is tricky. Podcasters generally have to negotiate deals separately. There are no clicks and podcasters can't really do the ad targeting that makes most online ads valuable. There isn't a deep analysis of pauses and abandons, like in google.
OTOH, there are no content policies. No "demonetization." No spying on consumers. No clickbait. No seo... and for the most part no rulers.
Even the clunkiness of discovery is half-feature. You ask friends what they listen to, and that mode of slow-and steady distribution makes for better incentives.
Meanwhile, Google and the like look at podcasts and see a piece of unclaimed territory like late stage empires and an island that wasn't worth bothering with 100 years previously.
[+] [-] random878|7 years ago|reply
Podcasts remind me of fanzines. Which is a great thing.
[+] [-] exabrial|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raxxorrax|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jsharm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monkeynotes|7 years ago|reply
"What we think is important is pretty simple. We want people to have easy access to the wide range of BBC programmes, not just a select few, and be able to discover and listen to new ones really easily."
Cutting off your audience potential to understand your audience better is some kind of broken logic. The comments section highlights that their own audience generally does not accept their reasoning.
[+] [-] moonstick|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snapdangle|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamescridland|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] calewis|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newaccoutnas|7 years ago|reply
(Also an ex-beeb employee)
[+] [-] Neil44|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnnycab|7 years ago|reply
I tried the BBC Sounds app, once I learnt about their intention to phase-out the excellent standalone iPlayer Radio app. The sound quality was markedly worse for live radio and coupled with a haphazard UI/UX - the app just got deleted. Also, there is no dearth of apps to consume podcasts e.g. I use the native Podcasts app on iOS and Deezer/Spotify on Android. BBC Sounds does not bring anything new or radical to the table.
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/bbc-sounds-iplayer-radio-pod...
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TheBeardKing|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
https://podnews.net/article/bbc-blocks-google
So why are they calling out Google specifically? And what results would they prefer?
[+] [-] Angostura|7 years ago|reply
I find this story quite confusing.
[+] [-] fearhugs|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickcw|7 years ago|reply
(The Archers is a long running (since 1951!) BBC Radio 4 soap opera about a fictional farming community. There are a lot of people addicted to this, including the wife.)
I had to avert this disaster as a wife with no Archers isn't worth contemplating, so I installed the BBC sounds app instead. It was my thought that the BBC pulled the content from google to get people using the BBC Sounds app instead.
The BBC Sounds app works, but it is a pretty terrible podcast app (2.2/5 stars on the Google Play store), it doesn't download and queue things, or let you order them etc.
[+] [-] Jonnax|7 years ago|reply
Is that going?
[+] [-] teh_klev|7 years ago|reply
Just let me download the fricken MP3, I don't need some stupid ad plagued spyware to listen to a podcast. I realise sometimes this can be about monetising your content to help pay for production costs. But you know what? I'm happy to pay, and already do to some folks via Patreon/Paypal etc. Just don't force me to jump through hoops to eventually locate the raw MP3 that I can listen to on my own terms.
[+] [-] afandian|7 years ago|reply
If Android users can't choose independent software to listen to podcasts that's too bad.
(It uses the iTunes database apparently)
[+] [-] kj4ips|7 years ago|reply
As of 9:20 Eastern, I don't yet see the second release of BBC global news that I would expect to see for yesterday, which does not bode well.
If you take away RSS, it's not even a podcast anymore.
[+] [-] astura|7 years ago|reply
https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/26/18282436/bbc-podcasts-goo...
EDIT: Here's the robots.txt file:
https://podcasts.files.bbci.co.uk/robots.txt?utm_source=podn...
[+] [-] kj4ips|7 years ago|reply
Additionally, the podnews article linked in other comments indicates this is just a trick with robots.txt, and does not appear to impact the actual function of the podcast.
[+] [-] elagost|7 years ago|reply
Podcasts are great because they're essentially open and standardized, and I can sync them with bloated desktop programs like iTunes, FOSS programs like Antennapod, or even command-line interfaces like Newsboat. DRM and arbitrary gating of media behind proprietary technologies just makes it worse and blocks it off from so many people.
[+] [-] danet|7 years ago|reply
Antenna pod -- https://antennapod.org/
Google play page -- https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.danoeh.ante...
Github -- https://github.com/antennapod/AntennaPod
It uses RSS and open standards, has all of the podcast playing features like 2x speed, sleep timer auto download etc.
[+] [-] phillipseamore|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]