loading . . . Why Marco Arment Is Wrong About Podcasting 2.0 I’m coming off a bit of a cold this week, but I still wanted to share some thoughts after reading a Reddit thread from Overcast creator Marco Arment about Podcasting 2.0. Marco has been a hugely influential indie developer, but I found myself disagreeing with several parts of his take on the Podcasting 2.0 movement and the open-source spirit behind it.
With my background in the WordPress world, I see a lot of parallels. Open ecosystems move forward because communities experiment, share ideas, and build on top of shared foundations. Nothing is mandatory, and no one is required to adopt every proposal. That freedom is exactly what keeps innovation moving.
In the video that accompanies this post, I break down Marco’s comments, why I think they’re missing the broader context of open podcasting, and why Podcasting 2.0 continues to matter as more major apps adopt its tags.
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#### Video Transcript
Why Marco Arment is wrong about open source
[00:00:00] Hey, it's Matt from the podcast setup.com. Got a bit of a cold. Bear with me one day. I'm gonna start an official podcast for this channel. I won't just be doing these one-off media blitz and, uh, standing on my soapbox, but that's what, uh, that's what the love of podcasting is for. I wanna highlight. A Reddit thread, uh, in the Overcast Reddit, uh, which I'm not a member of.
Um, I don't use Overcast. I used to way back in the day when it was the only indie option, uh, compared to or against, uh, apple Podcast offering, which was very thin and weak back then. But of course, podcasting wasn't as mature and as popular as it is today. Marco Armand, the creator of, uh. Overcast, uh, this is his Reddit and his thread on podcasting 2.0, talking about some of the tags that he wants to, uh, adopt into the software.
Uh, as you know, I'm an advocate for Podcasting 2.0. As you might also know, I spend a lot of time as a, uh, developer [00:01:00] advocate for WordPress in the greater WordPress space, which has a lot of similarities to podcasting. They're both open source when we're talking about RSS publishing and where you can host a podcast and they're both community driven, like podcasting 2.0.
WordPress has a massive community. These two things are, or these two communities, these two projects are not unique in open source. That's how a lot of open source stuff. Works. We have open source code backed by maybe a commercial company, and a lot of that support comes from people in the community who give their time developing, advocating, marketing, integrating, adopting, reviewing, creating security patches, et cetera.
So that is the lay of the land. If you don't quite understand what podcasting 2.0 is, but you should know what Podcasting 2.0 is, especially if you're a pod news listener. Um, apple keeps adopting some really cool features from podcasting 2.0, like chapters and [00:02:00] transcripts. They're continuing to enhance the.
Apple Podcast app, uh, and it's quite a fantastic app actually. My daily driver right now is Pocket Cast. Um, but I have a set of podcasts that I listen to on Apple podcasts so that I can continue to, um, test drive and dog food what Apple's doing, especially when it comes to adding these tags. So I want to give Marco credit, of course, for leading the charge of Indie podcast app development.
And really sort of setting the groundwork for an alternative, um, in the Apple ecosystem so many years ago. But I think that's the issue is that it's these resting on these laurels of so many years ago where he has a very opinionated view on adapting to podcasting 2.0, and that's totally fine. Setting the stage for this stuff.
That is the beauty of open source. In WordPress world, there are many solutions to the same problem. There are developers [00:03:00] creating software to solve form, contact forms, and form entry data. That's my day job at Gravity Forms, we have a lot of competitors, both free and commercial. Third party, away from E, from WordPress.
It is totally fine to have many solutions. In fact, that's what drives innovation and awareness of open source stuff, right? Uh, especially in the lens of, of WordPress and, and podcasting. So it's great that he wants to adopt these tags and enhance overcast, and that is the beauty of what Podcasting 2.0 has brought to.
I'll call the industry is a ragtag set of people who are building really cool stuff on top of the RSS feed and enhancing what is possible. For podcasters, for listeners, for hosting companies, and heck, the greater [00:04:00] advertising and commercial side of podcasting at large chapters and transcripts, obviously being the most, um, the most powerful of solutions to come out of this movement.
So let's just dive into this Reddit thread really quick and I'm gonna quote some of the stuff from Marco and I'll link this up, uh, wherever you're watching or listening to this so you can read the whole thread. Marco says, the podcast namespace season and episode tags are supported in the current beta.
He's talking about overcast. I'm. Working on some others, including person chapters and transcripts. Fantastic person tag, great. Sort of enhances that visibility of who the host is, who's been on the show, et cetera. Very like really good chapters. Again, apple just adopted chapters and you can, and pockets and many other apps.
Have had chapters for a while. This is giving the listener the ability to skip ahead and find the chapters that they wanna listen to in your long format show, including cover art to those chapters. Very, really, um, or chapter art to those chapters. Fantastic [00:05:00] transcripts. We know the obvious thing here. Um, and he continues to say, I'd like to set the expectation accordingly, though there are some tags like those above that add useful metadata in many contexts that I look forward to supporting.
I don't see enough benefit or viable path to publisher adoption to justify supporting many of the tags or mechanisms. It's fine, like you don't have to. It's the beauty of the open source. You have it, you build on top of it. Think of the Linux kernel and how it. Uh, is is the heartbeat of, uh, Linux desktop applications.
You don't need every package. You don't need it to do every single way. I have no plans to support their cryptocurrency feature or anyone else's. It's too messy. It's outside of my expertise. I don't wanna get involved with many, uh, that people's money. That's fine. Like we've moved past that debate and I think where Marco.
Maybe just is unaware 'cause he is not spending time listening to the podcasting 2.0 podcast or the pod news weekly. Like people just get stuck in value for value in cryptocurrency. Oh my God. [00:06:00] Like that's the thing that just like they hear it and they immediately go, I don't want any part of this. I've talked about this ad nauseum.
It is looking at an alternative payment source. It doesn't have to be crypto, it can be the funding tag, which is literally a text field that says, if you wanna support me, click this button, click this link. It can go to PayPal, it can go to Stripe, it can go to my WordPress website, it can go wherever, but people just get bogged down in like podcasting two point.
Cryptocurrency. It's not more broadly. I'm gonna continue with his, with his comment here more broadly. I do have a bit of philosophical pushback on any pressure to adopt podcasting 2.0 proposal. Uh, this was not a standards body collaborating with podcasters podcast app makers and podcast listeners to get widespread agreement on a set of proposals.
It's some people who had some ideas and publish them. And [00:07:00] while I respect the people greatly, there are some great ideas within, and they gave it a name Podcasting 2.0 that suggests. Or they gave it a name Podcasting 2.0 that suggests a level of authority and inevitability that I do not agree with. I'll adopt the parts that make sense for Overcast to adopt and there are some good ones there.
But Podcasting 2.0 is not a standard in bold that anyone is obligated to adopt. It's a list of proposals. I'm always gonna prioritize features that I believe, uh, will have significant benefits to my customers. Some of those podcast namespace power, but the most won't be. And I like my set. I like to set my own roadmap.
Lemme start with that tail end. Absolutely. As an indie developer, yes, you should. That's how everybody should work. Open source gives, I feel, to the commons. You have this set of things that you can pull from and adopt into your own software. It could be one, tag all the tags. It's your prerogative to, to serve customers the right way.[00:08:00]
What I just completely disagree with and what I, I keep hearing over and over again as if podcasting 2.0 and the folks behind it are just constantly pushing onto people to, to do this or not. There could be another podcasting 2.0 that comes out. There could be, as Marco puts it, uh, a, a set of, uh, suggestions, um, and not obligated to adopt.
These are not standards. Yes. I understand that, and maybe there's another movement that comes up and comes up with a whole set of their own tags that could exist too. WordPress, Drupal, right. You know, any other indie app that's alongside of Overcast exist because somebody said, I want to do it this way, but this whole thing of like.
This was not a standards body collaborating with podcasters. Podcast app [00:09:00] makers. Podcasts, listen to get widespread agreement on a set of proposals. I mean, I use Overcast early on. I, I dunno, I feel like it was 10 years ago when I started using it. Has it been around that long? Did Marco start with asking everyone here's how it should be done?
No. What we're talking about is a guy who has had a very successful app who. Like the leading indie app probably on Apple Podcasts, right? And maybe even across, if you compared it to Google or um, uh, Android, you know, probably the most successful. And it's easy to look back and go, well, I'm at the top of the hill now.
No one's really asking or collaborating with me. I have a chip on my shoulder. And these podcasting 2.0 guys, like, they're, they're trying to like push this agenda. This is not how open source or innovation works. Marco, did he ask everybody? When I make this overcast app, I am going to ask, uh, everyone, [00:10:00] uh, all these podcast hosting companies, what the best way is to ingest RSS feeds, uh, and cash, uh, episodes.
I worked at a podcast hosting company for three years. I didn't hear from Marco once when I was at that company, right? Innovation does not start with this heavy set executive style, big organization, corporate style approach. Okay. Yes, it could be, but a lot of people, I'm sure, like Marco was sitting in a cafe and he was like, I think I'm gonna make a podcast app.
I don't like what Apple has to offer. I will make my own and I am going to launch it into the world. This is innovation. This is how a seed is planted and grown. I don't understand how somebody who's an indie developer who's not working at a giant corporation. It just has like this, this [00:11:00] distaste for a, a, an open source movement.
Is it because you don't like what I'll call the two founders of the project? Is it because there's this disagreement with, because cryptocurrency was there and, oh my God, if you're in that, I don't want any part of it. And guess what? It's totally fine if that's what Marco, how Marco is voting. But if it's just like all these steps weren't followed for innovation.
No one was collaborating. I mean, get involved. This is the biggest issue I see in the WordPress side is when people complain about what's happening with how WordPress is developing. And I never see anyone get involved with the community talks, with the developer, talks in the meetings, in the meetups, get involved.
And if you're too busy, you're too busy. But also don't get on the soapbox and complain that no one's talking to you. Indie developers that stifle open source innovations or communities [00:12:00] or like push it down because it wasn't done in like this practice, the standard practice kind of way. It drives me nuts.
That's why I'm here ranting about it. And, uh, I'll wrap it now because we've, we've gone on too long and I have a meeting to get to. he says, like, again, I'll repeat it while I respect the people greatly and there are some great ideas within that. Gave it the name podcast, it suggests a level of authority, inev in, in an inevitability that I don't agree with.
Podcasting 2.0 is not a standard. It's not a standard. And it's open source. I mean, no one is saying it's a standard, but when, if Margo just steps back for a moment and goes, like, if he's gonna keep saying, no, I'm not gonna do this. No one's, no one's making me do this. But also at the same time we see Apple adopting it.
Maybe Spotify doing some stuff. Maybe in the future, maybe YouTube does something, probably not. Maybe it does. And then we have all these other indie developers building on top of it. That's fine. if you don't wanna adopt it.
All right, let's wrap this video up. It's just because, Nope. Alright, let's just wrap this video up. It just really gets under my skin when. Somebody who is an indie developer, which I would classify in that more like open source kind of community, I'm sure he's an open source advocate. I mean, he's publishing a podcast app, ingest RSS feeds.
There must be some affinity to open publishing, an open distribution that Marco likes. He seems to be a very intelligent person, very successful in terms of this space. So I give him all the credit there. I just simply cannot understand when people. In the podcast space, in the people who probably advocate for an open web can also just be so [00:13:00] adamant against another open movement.
It's fine if you don't wanna adapt to it or adopt, uh, the suggestions. It's just when you sort of punch down on a group of people who are also innovating, just like you did in the beginning. Maybe still today, it doesn't make sense to me. We're all in this same boat. We're not the Spotify or the YouTubes, and I'm, I'm not even gonna throw Apple into that mix because they've been adopting some of these tags.
What more could we ask for? So. It's been another, uh, another episode. I'd love to hear your thoughts. Leave 'em in the comments below. Leave 'em on the blog post where you're listening to this or watching this. Leave 'em on the YouTube channel and one day I'll have a podcast. It's Matt from the podcast setup.
Join the newsletter for free. Let me, uh, let me interview you about your podcast setup. Go to the podcast setup.com. Thanks for watching.
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