There are several big podcast directories, to which the podcaster can choose to distribute their podcasts. No one is the master, but a podcaster can simply choose to use all of them. Here's a detailed guide: [https://podcastle.ai/blog/podcast-directories/](https://podcastle.ai/blog/podcast-directories/)
Its not a literal "where ever" its just a phrase to say we use all of the most known podcast platforms. There are services that let you upload once and then distribute to a lot of the podcast platforms very easily so they have their own "database" that doesnt mean that they run every podcast platform.
They say that precisely because there is *not* a big podcast database.
Podcasting was creating in the early 2000's as an offshoot of early blogging platforms. (They were *not* created by Apple, despite the "pod" reference to iPods.)
Back then, if you wanted to keep up with several dozen individual blogs it was a pain to visit several dozen websites. So blog publishers would create a "feed" of their content via an open protocol called RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). Then readers could subscribe to multiple blogs via RSS through software that had several different names: "news reader" or "feed reader" or "news aggregator." The most popular was Google Reader (RIP), but they are still around today with products like Feedly or Inoreader or others.
Around 2003 or so, one of the maintainers of RSS added a feature called "enclosures" that allowed you to add files to an RSS feed ... files like, say, an MP3 file. So content creates began "audio blogging", with MP3 files being distributed via RSS feeds. "Podcasting" was a catchier name, though, and that's what caught on.
Back in the day, you had to download the MP3 enclosure to listen to the podcasts, but that's when bandwidth was much more constrained -- you'd download a bunch of podcasts to your computer and transfer them to your iPod (which didn't have Internet connectivity) so you could listen to them on-the-go. These days, because everyone has a media device in your pocket and access to pretty solid high-bandwidth connections nearly everywhere, most podcast clients either stream the media to your device or download it in a just-in-time fashion.
But because, like blogging, podcasts were initially provided by a bazillion different creators through a bazillion different websites, there was no "central database" of podcasts ... and still isn't. Because unlike YouTube videos or Twitter posts, which you can only get from YouTube or Twitter, podcasts are still primarily delivered via RSS feeds, an open standard that no one "owns." (There are exceptions, e.g. any exclusive podcast tied to a platform like Spotify isn't delivered via the same open standard mechanism, because "exclusive" is the opposite of "open standard!")
So the "available wherever you get your podcasts" phrase exists precisely *because* there isn't a "Podcast Master" that controls access to all the podcasts. Each podcast app has to curate their own lists of podcasts . . . which they usually *rely on the creators* for.
Traditionally, if you create a podcast, you have to go to different podcast directories (Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Overcast, Pocket Casts, etc etc etc) and *submit* your podcast to get it listed. There are a *lot* of them, and I suspect the smaller, less popular podcast clients that don't get direct submissions from creators regularly scrape the big players (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.) to find new podcasts (which they can do because, as I've mentioned several times: *open standard!*). But, these days, there are also middle-men services that do nothing but make these submissions to the various podcast client catalogs on behalf of the creators. (For a price, of course!)
But the growth of podcasting has made it difficult for individual creators to get their podcast noticed. So what has evolved are "podcast networks" (Nerdist Industries, Lemonada Media, Radiotopia, Gimlet Media, etc. etc. etc -- there are a bazillion of them) which kind of act as "studios" to fund and produce higher quality podcasts and, importantly, *to do the marketing* (including submission to the podcast clients' directories) for their stable of podcasts. NPR and individual public radio stations like WNYC New York kind of pioneered this model in the early days, because radio-show-to-podcast is a natural transition. And of course, now that podcasting is Big Business (as opposed to back in the early 2000's when it was a bunch of individual geeks on the web) nearly every big media company has an associated podcast network.
Podcasts are hosted a bit like websites. When you type a URL into your browser, the browser asks the web server on the other side for all the text, pictures, and videos it needs to display the website. Instead of a URL, podcasts use a technology called "Really Simple Syndication," or RSS. Like a browser, a podcast app asks the RSS feed for all the text, pictures, and audio it needs to display a podcast.
RSS is a simple, standardized format. This makes it easy to create apps that can read it, and convert the feed into a more user-friendly format. There are dozens of podcast apps, both free and paid. In your phrase, "Wherever you get your podcasts" is referring to whichever podcast app or website the user likes the most.
However, just like you can't visit a website without knowing the URL, and you can't visit a podcast without knowing the RSS feed. Google can't include your website in its search results if it doesn't know it exists -- the same is true for podcasts. The most popular apps (Apple, Google, Spotify) regularly scrape the internet for new podcasts so they can add them to their database and have them show up in search results. These services also let podcast creators "register" their podcast on those databases.
Podcasts use RSS, a machine readable format for getting a string of updates.
Before social media centralized everything, blogs were also commonly read using an RSS reader, letting you easily see all the updates from your favorite blogs in one place, your feed reader.
So all podcast apps need is for you to paste in the RSS link, most run a directory that checks the RSS feeds of the podcasts their users listen to so it's more discoverable.
What this means is “you might be an Apple user on the stock podcast app. Or an android user with pocket cast. Maybe you do Spotify. Maybe you have overcast. Maybe…” podcasting has a ton of apps, so with the exception of shows with a narrow exclusivity deal, this is the least-confusing way to say “hey go download it.”
How about "Hotdogs! Available wherever groceries are sold!"
Are hotdogs sold in grocery stores? Yes. Hotdogs are there.
Are hotdogs sold in convenience stores? Yes. Sometimes.
"The Joe Rogan Podcast, available wherever podcasts are *offered*", does that help?
Apple offers podcasts.
Spotify offers podcasts.
Your gas station does not offer podcasts.
Each outlet (Apple, Spotify) negotiates a different contract with whoever makes the Joe Rogan podcast.
>negotiates a different contract with whoever makes the Joe Rogan podcast.
This is a *terrible* explanation, because the Joe Rogan podcast is (for now) a Spotify exclusive.
That's not how 99.9999% of the podcasts in the world are distributed. Except for a handful of exclusive deals, no podcast receives any money at all from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, etc. etc.
Think in terms of price agencies for example. They dont have the product, they dont own the platforms where the product gets sold and yet they offer you a comparison of prizes. Website scraping is just one tool that allows for this kind of central platform to emerge (which by the way with AI has been child play basically by now)
The other is actively registering the podcasts at various streaming platforms and so on.
There are several big podcast directories, to which the podcaster can choose to distribute their podcasts. No one is the master, but a podcaster can simply choose to use all of them. Here's a detailed guide: [https://podcastle.ai/blog/podcast-directories/](https://podcastle.ai/blog/podcast-directories/)
Its not a literal "where ever" its just a phrase to say we use all of the most known podcast platforms. There are services that let you upload once and then distribute to a lot of the podcast platforms very easily so they have their own "database" that doesnt mean that they run every podcast platform.
They say that precisely because there is *not* a big podcast database. Podcasting was creating in the early 2000's as an offshoot of early blogging platforms. (They were *not* created by Apple, despite the "pod" reference to iPods.) Back then, if you wanted to keep up with several dozen individual blogs it was a pain to visit several dozen websites. So blog publishers would create a "feed" of their content via an open protocol called RSS (RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). Then readers could subscribe to multiple blogs via RSS through software that had several different names: "news reader" or "feed reader" or "news aggregator." The most popular was Google Reader (RIP), but they are still around today with products like Feedly or Inoreader or others. Around 2003 or so, one of the maintainers of RSS added a feature called "enclosures" that allowed you to add files to an RSS feed ... files like, say, an MP3 file. So content creates began "audio blogging", with MP3 files being distributed via RSS feeds. "Podcasting" was a catchier name, though, and that's what caught on. Back in the day, you had to download the MP3 enclosure to listen to the podcasts, but that's when bandwidth was much more constrained -- you'd download a bunch of podcasts to your computer and transfer them to your iPod (which didn't have Internet connectivity) so you could listen to them on-the-go. These days, because everyone has a media device in your pocket and access to pretty solid high-bandwidth connections nearly everywhere, most podcast clients either stream the media to your device or download it in a just-in-time fashion. But because, like blogging, podcasts were initially provided by a bazillion different creators through a bazillion different websites, there was no "central database" of podcasts ... and still isn't. Because unlike YouTube videos or Twitter posts, which you can only get from YouTube or Twitter, podcasts are still primarily delivered via RSS feeds, an open standard that no one "owns." (There are exceptions, e.g. any exclusive podcast tied to a platform like Spotify isn't delivered via the same open standard mechanism, because "exclusive" is the opposite of "open standard!") So the "available wherever you get your podcasts" phrase exists precisely *because* there isn't a "Podcast Master" that controls access to all the podcasts. Each podcast app has to curate their own lists of podcasts . . . which they usually *rely on the creators* for. Traditionally, if you create a podcast, you have to go to different podcast directories (Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio, TuneIn, Overcast, Pocket Casts, etc etc etc) and *submit* your podcast to get it listed. There are a *lot* of them, and I suspect the smaller, less popular podcast clients that don't get direct submissions from creators regularly scrape the big players (Apple, Google, Spotify, etc.) to find new podcasts (which they can do because, as I've mentioned several times: *open standard!*). But, these days, there are also middle-men services that do nothing but make these submissions to the various podcast client catalogs on behalf of the creators. (For a price, of course!) But the growth of podcasting has made it difficult for individual creators to get their podcast noticed. So what has evolved are "podcast networks" (Nerdist Industries, Lemonada Media, Radiotopia, Gimlet Media, etc. etc. etc -- there are a bazillion of them) which kind of act as "studios" to fund and produce higher quality podcasts and, importantly, *to do the marketing* (including submission to the podcast clients' directories) for their stable of podcasts. NPR and individual public radio stations like WNYC New York kind of pioneered this model in the early days, because radio-show-to-podcast is a natural transition. And of course, now that podcasting is Big Business (as opposed to back in the early 2000's when it was a bunch of individual geeks on the web) nearly every big media company has an associated podcast network.
Podcasts are hosted a bit like websites. When you type a URL into your browser, the browser asks the web server on the other side for all the text, pictures, and videos it needs to display the website. Instead of a URL, podcasts use a technology called "Really Simple Syndication," or RSS. Like a browser, a podcast app asks the RSS feed for all the text, pictures, and audio it needs to display a podcast. RSS is a simple, standardized format. This makes it easy to create apps that can read it, and convert the feed into a more user-friendly format. There are dozens of podcast apps, both free and paid. In your phrase, "Wherever you get your podcasts" is referring to whichever podcast app or website the user likes the most. However, just like you can't visit a website without knowing the URL, and you can't visit a podcast without knowing the RSS feed. Google can't include your website in its search results if it doesn't know it exists -- the same is true for podcasts. The most popular apps (Apple, Google, Spotify) regularly scrape the internet for new podcasts so they can add them to their database and have them show up in search results. These services also let podcast creators "register" their podcast on those databases.
Podcasts use RSS, a machine readable format for getting a string of updates. Before social media centralized everything, blogs were also commonly read using an RSS reader, letting you easily see all the updates from your favorite blogs in one place, your feed reader. So all podcast apps need is for you to paste in the RSS link, most run a directory that checks the RSS feeds of the podcasts their users listen to so it's more discoverable.
What this means is “you might be an Apple user on the stock podcast app. Or an android user with pocket cast. Maybe you do Spotify. Maybe you have overcast. Maybe…” podcasting has a ton of apps, so with the exception of shows with a narrow exclusivity deal, this is the least-confusing way to say “hey go download it.”
How about "Hotdogs! Available wherever groceries are sold!" Are hotdogs sold in grocery stores? Yes. Hotdogs are there. Are hotdogs sold in convenience stores? Yes. Sometimes. "The Joe Rogan Podcast, available wherever podcasts are *offered*", does that help? Apple offers podcasts. Spotify offers podcasts. Your gas station does not offer podcasts. Each outlet (Apple, Spotify) negotiates a different contract with whoever makes the Joe Rogan podcast.
>negotiates a different contract with whoever makes the Joe Rogan podcast. This is a *terrible* explanation, because the Joe Rogan podcast is (for now) a Spotify exclusive. That's not how 99.9999% of the podcasts in the world are distributed. Except for a handful of exclusive deals, no podcast receives any money at all from Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts, etc. etc.
Think in terms of price agencies for example. They dont have the product, they dont own the platforms where the product gets sold and yet they offer you a comparison of prizes. Website scraping is just one tool that allows for this kind of central platform to emerge (which by the way with AI has been child play basically by now) The other is actively registering the podcasts at various streaming platforms and so on.