Google Attempts To Solve Podcasting's Discovery Problem By Embedding Playable Episodes in Search (fastcompany.com) 57
From a report: Looking for a specific podcast has always been a straightforward process: Plug in the title or the host's name in an app store or search engine and you're golden. But when you're not sure what you're looking for or just want to peruse your options based on a topic, you've had to rely on articles with roundups of different shows, random Twitter recommendations, or bounce from platform to platform with your query. Sites like Listen Notes and Audiosear.ch (until it shut down in 2017), among many other startups determined to crack podcast discovery, were created to solve this problem by aspiring to be the Google for podcasts. But now Google wants to be the Google for podcasts.
Starting today, the company announced that it's updating its search function to include playable episodes within the search results around a topic. So if you're looking for "podcasts about grilling" or "knitting podcasts," results will surface with relevant episodes "based on Google's understanding of what's being talked about on a podcast," according to a Google blog post, "so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form."
Starting today, the company announced that it's updating its search function to include playable episodes within the search results around a topic. So if you're looking for "podcasts about grilling" or "knitting podcasts," results will surface with relevant episodes "based on Google's understanding of what's being talked about on a podcast," according to a Google blog post, "so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form."
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I would have no problem with Google ignoring me. I'm just surprised that they don't try to make money off the idea of not being searchable, same as the telcos used to charge extra for an unlisted number.
For most people , whether you can be found via Google or not is pretty irrelevant. The people who you know already know how to find you, and what do you care what some stranger thinks?
"Influencers"? Drop them as so much noise. Whether it's podcasts or Facebook or Twitter, they should all be in a bug dat
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Yea. I like corporate TV too.
Podcasts don't have a discovery problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem with podcasts is who needs this shit? For information, text is more efficient and more searchable. Podcasts suck at this (same as podcasts suck at everything else ).
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That's good. I painted unsolicited murals on 3 barns this morning, had some drive by graffit on 2 while on the work, where I spend the rest of the day designing murals intended to annoy farmers.
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No, this absolutely shouldn't be modded up. All of you are literally saying "people shouldn't like things I don't like". There's plenty of good podcasts, some of them quite impressive, rivaling old radio programs. Yes, some podcasts are garbage, just like some of everything is garbage. But if you don't like it, simply don't listen to it.
God, you people come across as authoritarian asshats. Live and let live.
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God, you people come across as authoritarian asshats. Live and let live.
Welcome to Slashdot, newcomer!
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Mod parent up
I have yet to listen to a podcast where any intellectual conversation occurs. Maybe there truly _is_ great content, but I've only found retarded Joe Roegan conversations
Maybe you need some kind of search engine...
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I'm mostly of the same mind, they strike me as a new form of talk radio. So I suppose given the right personalities and the right content there should be something I'd like and enjoy listening to. Whatever that is though I've yet to come across it and even if searching for these things was effective I probably wouldn't even know where to start.
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My wife is a professional artist and she will turn on a podcast or TED talk while she paints or sculpts, or even just doing housework. While text is my preferred medium, audio is perfectly valid too. The ideal would be if they just transcribed all the podcasts. Heck, I'd love transcriptions of talk radio too.
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The problem with podcasts is who needs this shit? For information, text is more efficient and more searchable.
There are plenty of good podcasts, and while I might be able to "read them more efficiently", I cannot do so in the middle of a 10 mile trail run. I cannot read text in the middle of a long car trip while driving across Oklahoma.
I can listen to a podcast in both those situations, and plenty of others where reading is simply not an option.
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Text is not so convenient when you are jogging or driving, or you just want to lay down in bed,
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I use them to listen in the car, also useful for listening while exercising, and so forth. Reading doesn't work well while driving. And go find some quality ones; there are some with comedy, some from NPR radio shows, and so forth (normal drive time radio has a show I don't like). Audio books work for the same case, but I find myself too often missing parts because I'm more focused on driving, whereas with the podcast it's not so vital if miss a few words.
Ie, This American Life, Radio Lab, Wait Wait Don'
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"Who needs this shit?" Literally hundreds of millions [musicoomph.com] of people. Text is only more efficient if you are just sitting there. It is considerably less efficient if you are driving a car, or walking on a treadmill, painting a wall, or doing anything else that requires the attention of your eyes.
It's okay if you don't like podcasts though. I'm sure you are not alone and that many don't. Most of those people manage to get through life without complaining about the very existance of podcasts though. You may want t
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If what you're looking for is a raw information dump about plain facts, podcasts are absolutely worse than plain text. They take longer to consume, are less searchable, and can't be referenced as easily.
But audio is far superior to text at conveying emotion, nuance, a sense of time and place, and any number of other things. Can you hear the sadness, passion, frustration, and hope in the I Have a Dream [youtube.com] speech? Does the hair on the back of your neck stand on end when you hear the air raid sirens and verbal wa
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> The problem with friends is who needs them? For information, a full text transcript of everything they've ever said is more efficient and searchable. Friends suck at providing meaningful information on a dime 24/7 (same as female friends suck at giving me sex on demand when I want it)
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Some people might try to sway you with examples of MLK2's "I have a Dream" speech or perhaps Churchill & Maiden's "We shall fight on the beaches" or JFK's conjuring of the Apollo project. It's easy to see why these examples fail, though, as it sets the bar pretty low when it comes to the speaker's charisma and powers of persuasion. Also, let's face it: they're old! Those speeches all apply to a world that nobody alive today can have any empathy with, and values which no longer exist.
So let's study a co
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Youtube videos are harder to discover because there's jut too many of them. Every fuckwith with a webcam or smartphone and half a braincell makes a video these days, and half the time they're just promoting their friends who make other stupid videos with ten seconds of new stuff before they veer back and start thanking their gullible patreon fans. Not reallly much to discover there.
Not a good thing (Score:1)
Podcasts are the only form of digital media that's isn't ruined by Google yet. You can "make it" based on content quality. You can be an independent content maker and don't have to resolve to click-bait, gimmicks and self-censorship to compete. Google will try to change that.
Why (Score:3)
Why doesn't Google just use a voice to text system and create a written transcript of the podcast. That would easily be searchable.
Of course if Google voice to text system isn't up for it I bet Amazon's can.
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They already do that for YouTube videos, and in the last year or so it's finally got really good. Maybe that's why they are now rolling this out too - they can reliably search the content of podcasts and provide snippets.
Publishing a transcription might have DMCA issues.
Will be gamed (Score:5, Interesting)
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Google seems to have mitigated the vandalism issue somewhat by not updating their cache of the Wikipedia article until the content has been stable for a while. Images that are uploaded and removed a short while later don't seem to appear in search results any more.
Of course longer term vandalism still persists.
What Linux utility was it, by the way?
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Wow. The deletionists really pushing hard to destroy Wikipedia again. Glad I got out years ago.
This is the wrong direction for the web (Score:5, Interesting)
But when you're not sure what you're looking for or just want to peruse your options based on a topic, you've had to rely on articles with roundups of different shows, random Twitter recommendations, or bounce from platform to platform with your query.
This is how the internet is supposed to work. Peer-to-peer recommendations and links from place to place.
Sites like Listen Notes and Audiosear.ch (until it shut down in 2017), among many other startups determined to crack podcast discovery, were created to solve this problem by aspiring to be the Google for podcasts.
This is the wrong model. Eventually one or two sites win and become the monopoly. After that podcasts that aren't indexed by those sites will essentially vanish. Sponsored podcasts will be at the top. Then the sites will switch toward streaming the podcasts themselves instead of just linking to them. Now they are a "publisher." They'll have an app. After that the sites will be filled with ads, then they'll tie ad revenue to number of plays, and embed ads into the playback and share the money with you. Then sensationalized clickbaity audio streams will spring up to try and nab the revenue. The site will be called a "platform" and have a cute name like "castify" or "podcastingly." Eventually the terms "streaming audio" and "podcast" will be changed, and people will say "Do you Castify?" or "Are you on Castify?" Castify will have to police the audio at that point, because advertising companies won't want their ads on politically-incorrect ideas. The idea that you can put an .mp3 file on a web site and have it indexed based on how many people link to it will be forgotten, like how home pages are today.
We have seen this story too many times. The web is better-off with the decentralized approach. Indexes are fine, but they should be neutral webcrawlers not "platforms." Someone help me out: Where in the above story will they do their billion dollar IPO? I want to at least get in at the right time.
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You're not wrong. But that seems to be the model the Post-Eternal-September set wants for the internet. Anyone who doesn't want it is a tiny niche and doesn't have enough influence to halt the inevitable.
Search engines indexing podcasts -- if it's done well, and if it isn't done well at first you can reasonably expect that it'll get better -- is likely to shut down the platforms, because it enables the decentralized model. At least, it does as long as people use the search engines by default. The opposite has happened with Amazon, because it's become the both platform and the search engine for online retail, so many (most?) people just go straight to Amazon when looking to buy something. I know I usually
Kill two birds with one stone (Score:4, Insightful)
If a podcaster would provide a transcript of their podcast, then it solves both the above problems. Google should be using this as a carrot to encourage podcasters to provide transcripts of their podcasts. If you make a transcript, your podcast gets included in searches and becomes accessible to deaf people. No transcript, no search hits.
As a bonus, someone could use voice recognition technology to synchronize the transcript with the podcast (making them like video subtitles). You could then quickly scan the transcript and click on a part which looked interesting, and instantly play the podcast from that point instead of having to search for it with fast-forward / rewind.