Have you heard of podcasts? They're booming and they rely on RSS. The way they're subscribed to and the way they're submitted to large platforms is via their RSS feeds.
The podcast industry might be booming, but the days of nearly every podcast being freely available with an RSS feed is certainly over. Granted this is mostly a business decision rather than a technical decision. Companies like Spotify want you to listen to their podcasts on their platform. This allows them to better track ad statistics and push other revenue streams compared to podcasts served over traditional RSS feeds.
> This allows them to better track ad statistics and push other revenue streams compared to podcasts served over traditional RSS feeds.
It's not just better ad statistics -- with apps like Stitcher/Spotify, the app contains both discovery and download, and also the player. When you listen to podcasts on their apps, they're able to report useful, interesting metrics to podcast producers like skip rate, bounce rate, etc. They're valuable metrics.
As far as I know, podcasts that are distributed by RSS and consumed by the apple podcasts app / any other app don't gather these metrics. There's no reason they couldn't though, because RSS / Atom have plenty of flexibility to add a field for a metric reporting callback/webhook. We could have an open convention for what goes over that webhook, maybe even some competition in providing podcast playback metrics as a service.
(... does this all exist already and I'm just behind the times?)
There are plenty of 'open' standards[0] for webhooking and reporting ads, however there isn't much client support. As far as listening metrics go, Apple has implemented non intrusive podcast analytics already[1].
Podcasts work really well as is. They don't need fixing. Barrier to entries are low, and like the early days of youtube, you can have a successful podcast with a relatively low production value. They are published openly, monetizing gets easier with some traction. There is so much cross promotion that discoverability isn't a challenge either. I just hope the 'open podcast ecosystem' can resist attempts to be destroyed by Spotify/Luminary etc. This happy medium doesn't need personalized targeted advertising.
You are correct and that data certainly has other uses that can benefit content creators. However let's be honest, the primary reason for gathering those statistics is to leverage them for ads.
They're funding podcasts on the condition they are Spotify-exclusive. It's not about if you enjoy it or not, but just that you need to use Spotify to listen to a particular podcaast.
I'm in the strong belief if your podcast doesn't have a public feed (even if it's paywalled) and it's only on spotify then it's not a podcast, it's a very long unmelodic song. The feed is essential.
iTunes hasn't tried to "fix" it. iTunes runs a podcast directory for discovering podcasts, but it still uses the podcaster's feeds to actually deliver episodes. The API for the directory is public, so any podcatcher can use it for their search functionality.
Have you heard of podcasts? They're booming and they rely on RSS. The way they're subscribed to and the way they're submitted to large platforms is via their RSS feeds.