Imagine if a podcaster with 21 million subscribers distributed his videos over BitTorrent as a proof of concept, e.g., own tracker, magnet links, no DHT, download not streamed (watchable offline anywhere, anytime)

Big Tech wants the public, specifically their employees, investors and followers, to believe that there is no alternative to the use of third party intermediaries with data centers and billions in cash flow

With this PoC, the ISP makes money from internet subscriptions, the hosting company makes money from hosting trackers, but there's not _necessarily_ a business model for the podcaster. It is up to the podcaster (not a middleman^1) whether to "monetise" their work. For example, it is within the sole discretion of the podcaster, not the middleman, how the podcaster's work is used. If the podcaster wants to use their reach to promote or sell something to the audience, then that's an option, but not a requirement

Under Big Tech "feudalism", where access to the podcaster's (sharecropper's) work is intermediated by a third party, the podcaster is required to allow the intermediary to perform data collection, surveillance and advertising services with respect the podcaster's audience

The third party. not the podcaster, gets to choose the advertisers. The podcaster generally has no negotiating power. The deal is "take it or leave it"

There may also be issues around "censorship" or at least "discoverability" (as noted in parent comment) as the third party mediates access to the podcaster's work in furtherance of its own business goals, which may not always align with the goals of the podcaster. For example, the podcaster might have non-commercial goals as in the parent comment

I'm not sure it's possible to argue against a hypothetical PoC, e.g., "Don't try it", "It will never work", "It's been done before and it failed", etc. but no doubt HN replies may try

It stands to reason that the only effective argument against a specific PoC, real or hypothetical, would be for the PoC to be executed and then to fail

I listen to podcasts on my morning and evening commute (in my car). I can skip forward 30 seconds, or back 10 seconds with a click of a button, so I'm baffled why everyone else isn't doing the same??? As I'm not going to buy the thing that is being advertised I don't feel guilty - it's not like anyone is losing out.

Companies target more than just people with the most money. Walmart and Rolex for example target different customers with different priorities.

So even if you completely lost the top 5% or even 20% of incomes, what remains is plenty valuable to many companies.

The main point of the site isn’t that Ads are bad. It’s that too many Ads end up driving away listeners, and are therefore self-defeating. There’s an acceptable ratio of ads to content (10% airtime or less).

There is a set of hobby casts in small niches.

Also in some countries you got public radio stations producing podcasts (even podcast first formats not played on radio) - while that might Fall under subscription, while not being a subscription on anything specific.

I haven't listened to podcasts in years, but used to enjoy them. I would've paid for a YouTube premium-esque subscription to skip ads on all the podcasts on my podcast app of choice. I'd want the podcast to get a cut from that subscription that would make it worth it, in the same way YouTube premium makes it worth me not seeing ads.

(I use Sponsorblock on YouTube too since there are platform ads and then sponsors baked into the videos.)

What are the ones spreading blatant disinfornation financed by?

I'm not sure what features people consider important, as I've never used Spotify or other common podcast apps, but I've had a good experience getting podcasts through Patreon and then adding them to AntennaPod through their rss feed.

Youtube + the sponsor block plugin is my goto when it's an option.

You're absolutely right.

I wish they'd at least use something other than ChatGPT. Its "voice" is absolutely grating.

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Ads again, I would guess. RSS feeds maybe don’t monetize as well because you can’t load a simple MP3 file up with trackers to verify that you are, e.g., not fast forwarding through the ads. Or make the ads unskippable. That sort of thing.

Which podcasts aren't available in the traditional feed?

well technically peertube exists & I feel like there must be some easy way of deployment of them as well from what I can think of.

also am not familiar but I think that a lemmy community can be created with podcasts where people can share their podcasts or a mastodon/pixelfed community too.

federated options exists but the people there just don't exist or try to use it in this way.

Maybe a federated instance about podcasting (and a domain name related to it) can be established to become a de-facto (maybe non profit/donation running service) too.

I think that it could scale really a lot on OVH dedicated servers or Hetzner auction boxes and run on quite a substantially few amount of dollars for the infra that the google/youtube monopolistic power can go away.

We know the answer to this because we’ve seen it. 20 years ago very very few podcasters were trying to monetize. The current ad infrastructure didn’t exist yet. Patreon didn’t exist yet. If people did anything they just had a PayPal donation link on the website.

It was smaller, but far from dead. More of a grassroots hobbyist phenomenon. Production quality was lower, but in some respects content quality was better because nerds nerding out without worrying about whether whatever they’re doing will attract enough listeners meant there was an incredible diversity of voices, perspectives and subject matter.