Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Podcasting was built on RSS: an open, decentralized protocol not owned by any big company. The Podcast Standards Project exists to keep it that way, and to make it better. We're a coalition of podcast apps and hosting companies collaborating to adopt new features that benefit both listeners and creators. This podcast is where we share what we're working on.
Hey, it's Justin Jackson. I'm one of the founding members of the Podcast Standards Project, also known as the PSP. It is a group of podcast hosting platforms and podcast apps. Places to listen and watch podcasts. And we put those people in the same room together.
Justin Jackson:Sometimes it's a physical room like we did when we did our meetup in London. Sometimes it's in Slack. Sometimes it's in GitHub discussions. But the whole point is to get podcast hosting platforms and podcast apps in the same room so that we can talk about innovating on top of RSS, which is the way that podcasts have been distributed from the beginning. It's a decentralized protocol.
Justin Jackson:It's not owned by anybody. Apple doesn't own it. YouTube doesn't own it. Spotify doesn't own it. And this makes it incredible in terms of creating this diverse podcast ecosystem that we have.
Justin Jackson:It allows creators to really own their relationship with their audience. And it's allowed a lot of small businesses to thrive, honestly. We get these folks in the same room, and then we discuss how we can adopt new features that will be valuable for creators and for listeners. And a lot of our discussion is around which podcasting two point o features we adopt. Podcasting two point o is this the open source project that's amazing where they're doing all sorts of innovation on top of RSS.
Justin Jackson:But of course, for that to be valuable, hosting platforms, the places where creators upload and distribute their content, and the apps, places like Apple Podcasts and Pocket Casts and Overcast, they all need to adopt those standards. And so the Podcast Standards Project is really a way to collaborate and discuss, okay, how can we create some alignment here? How can we all move in unison so that these features are widely available both on the creation side and on the consumption side. Otherwise, it doesn't really work. You can innovate as much as you want, but unless features are adopted both on the creation side and on the consumption side, it doesn't matter.
Justin Jackson:So I've personally been volunteering a lot more time with this group, partly because we just needed it. We needed somebody that could plan meetings and do things like that. But also because I can see the value of spearheading some of these initiatives. I think a few of our big successes were first, the adoption of the podcast transcript tag, which has been widely adopted by big apps like Apple and smaller apps like Pocket Casts. And we definitely needed the hosting platforms to offer that to allow people to upload their own transcriptions or to generate transcriptions on the hosting platforms.
Justin Jackson:I also spent a lot of time last year advocating for HLS video in RSS feeds. So HLS video is a streaming protocol, and it's just a really good protocol for delivering video to podcast consumers. And since we made that big push into HLS video, Amazon Music has adopted HLS in RSS as has iHeart. At Pocketcasts is coming soon. Fountain, TrueFans already supported it.
Justin Jackson:And Podcast Guru, they also support HLS video. So this was a really big win. And then we saw Apple come out with a big announcement that they were supporting HLS, not in RSS, but through this API. I still see that as a win because it doesn't preclude them from ingesting HLS video from the RSS feed. And the other benefit of Apple getting into this is just now a lot of hosting providers are offering the encoding and hosting and streaming of HLS video from their servers.
Justin Jackson:So it just means way more HLS video is being produced and creators are uploading more. And so it just makes it a lot easier to add that HLS manifest URL into that alternate enclosure tag in the RSS feed. And then creators get even more distribution, not just to Apple, but also to iHeart, Amazon Music, Podcast Guru, Fountain, True Fans, Pocket Casts, etc. So that's basically how we work. There's no membership fees.
Justin Jackson:Nobody's getting paid. We're all volunteers when we do this work. And the only requirement to becoming a certified member, you can certainly be involved if you're not a certified member, but to be a certified member, you have to adopt a certain number of features on the hosting side, if you're a host, and on the podcast app side, if you're a podcast app. And you can see that at our website, podstandards.org/features. Now, if you want to be involved, we have a contact form on our website.
Justin Jackson:Go there. We do our discussions, like I said, in Slack in between in person meetings and also on our GitHub. So if you're a hosting platform or an app, you can feel free to join us in Slack, even if you're not ready to be a member yet. And then try to join us for one of our in person meetups. We do those usually around conference times, certainly at the London Podcast Show, but we try to do a meeting in The United States as well.
Justin Jackson:So come for a meeting and hang out. We're also trying to get more creators and other folks from the podcast ecosystem to come to those meetings and offer us their insights. We had some great creators join us at the last few meetings and some people from different associations and other industry bodies join us as well. So yeah, if you want to get ahold of us, go to podstandards.org and click our contact form. If want get ahold of me directly, I am Justin Jackson.
Justin Jackson:I'm the co founder of transistor.fm. I'm on LinkedIn and all the other places you can DM me there. And yeah, I'd love to hear from you if you would like to get involved. Thanks.