Here’s where The Standards Innovation Paradox can be fixedĭuring his tenure, the company (re-)launched video podcasting. They don’t, however, have the mass takeup that you’d only get from big supporters, like Apple or Spotify. Some tags, like the transcript tag, are elegant solutions to thorny problems that podcasting has had for a while and enables creator control of transcripts which are useful for brand-safety and content analysis as well as the more obvious benefits for those who are deaf or hard of hearing. These new tags enable all kinds of new functionality for podcasting, and have been very quickly implemented by a set of new podcast apps and providers. New tags exist for all kinds of new things in podcasting: from video versions of audio files (the alternateEnclosuretag), a method of potentially combatting unauthorised copying of shows (the locked tag), to full transcripts (the, you’ve guessed it, transcript tag). Don’t stop me now, ‘cause I’m having a good timeĪnd, step forward The Podcast Index, which has formalised a bunch more new tags in the so-called “new podcast namespace”. ![]() Apple got first-mover advantage, and supported these tags before anyone else. ![]() ![]() Some, poor, podcast apps (and hosts) still don’t support some of these new tags: but that doesn’t mean the change was useless. Apple added these new tags, which don’t break the standard. And many other podcast apps have also supported the tags, too.Īpple could evolve the specification because the iTunes namespace, which all podcast RSS feeds use, enables Apple to add more tags without breaking anything for anyone else.Īpple could also evolve the specification because it has a market share of around 40% of all listening: so podcasters know that when they implement a new tag, it has a benefit for a large segment of their audience.Īnytime a team wants to do something exciting and new that exceeds the limitations of the standard, they have to get every stakeholder (or at least enough to reach a critical mass of adoption) who has adopted that standard to also adopt the change, otherwise the change is useless. The new tags also include episode numbers and other things.īy and large, most podcasters have adopted these new tags, because, again, they can see the benefit in them. Now, you can mark that an episode is a “trailer”, or whether the show should be listened-to in chronological order. In June 2017, Apple innovated the standard again: adding a set of new tags. Imagine a podcast app today without those ubiquitous thumbnails: items that weren’t in the original podcast RSS specification. They also took it upon themselves to define a list of categories, which they last updated in 2019.Īpple added these new tags because it enhanced the experience and because podcasters saw the benefit in them (aided by the refusal of Apple to accept shows without artwork in the right format, a thing podcasters have fun with even today). However, the benefit of RSS feeds are that you can add additional “namespaces”, which can power additional features without breaking the standards.Īpple put podcasting into iTunes in June 2005, and with it, they added their own namespace, which added additional tags for things like show artwork. If you plow ahead with the change anyway and break the standard, then you lose the benefits of the standard. ![]() Mignano describes standards as difficult to work with because: The two most obvious: there are no thumbnail images, and no categories. Now, if you look carefully at it, you’ll notice a few things that are missing.
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