Hi, everyone. The next speaker is here. So our next talk is podcasting 2.0. It's all
about interoperability. And the next speaker is Benjamin Bellamy. Give him a round of applause.
Hello, everyone. Thank you for being here. Today we're going to talk about podcasting
and more specifically, podcasting 2.0. And more specifically about – can you all see
the screen? Yeah, good. So you can read it because I cannot pronounce that word. Interoperability.
Love the concept. Hate the word. So why talking about podcasting here at Fosdame? Because
podcasting will save the open internet. So let me introduce myself. I'm Benjamin Bellamy.
I love podcasts, which is why I'm going to talk about podcasting. I love open source,
which is why I'm here today. I'm founder and CEO of a company called Adoress, which
is Latin. So don't ask me how to pronounce it. It's Latin. No one knows. And it means
going to the ears. And I'm the father of Castopod. We'll talk about that later. And
my father – I mean, Castopod is my baby. I was here when it was conceived. But now
it's all grown up, and I cannot see it as much as I would like to. But enough talking
about me. Let's talk about you. So I'm going to make a quick poll. I'm going to ask each
one of you four questions. So that's going to take half an hour, and there will be half
time for Q&A. Oh, no. Just where is your hand? Who's here is a podcaster? Also, like 30%.
Who's a developer? Okay. Just one arm, because that's 200%. Have you heard of podcasting
2.0 before? Okay. So 25%. And have you heard of Castopod? 20%. Okay. So let's talk about
users. Users are always the problem. No users, no bug reports. So the problem that we are
facing now, all of us, is that we have to choose. We have to choose between the open
web and the closed web. Between where we have control and where we don't have control.
But of course, we don't have to be religious about this. And we know that closed silos
are comfortable. When we are on the website of watching videos, silos are very useful
because you get everything you need. You need a feature. It's there. You need to upload
a file. You need to index it. You need to recommend it. You need to monetize it. Anything
as a user or as a content creator. It's all there. It's very easy, very convenient. So
at the end, yeah, that's probably the best solution. Let's all use closed silos because
they're so much easier for everything. So, yeah, actually, maybe I was wrong. So let's
go to closed silos and forget about this open internet problem. Or maybe there's something
else. If you're a user, yes, maybe that can make sense. But as soon as you are a content
creator, and I see that many of you are podcasters, we have to think about what can influence
the content that you create. If you are on the open internet, so that's a federated network
or a self-hosted platform, whichever, well, you have to follow the regulations. The law
applies to each and every one of you. If you don't, you'll probably get into some troubles.
And that's it. You are the only one in control of your content. Whereas if you're on the
closed web, so let's say YouTube, well, you still have to follow the laws and the regulations.
And you'll have issues as well on this platform. But at the same time, you have to follow the
terms and conditions of the platform. The economic, political, ideological interests
specific to the platform, and government pressure on the platform, talk about China or wherever,
mass reporting of your content by opponent or competitors, this happens all the time,
every day. A boat, how many times have we uploaded the content and we got a strike and
then you end up talking to a boat and say, I got a strike, I don't know, it makes no
sense. Well, that's what happens. A moderator in a bad mood. And a platform shutting down.
Like you create content, you put all your value into it, you trust a platform where
you put the value that you created and then it's gone. Let's, I don't know, like Google
plus, goodbye. Goodbye Google wave, goodbye Google everything. So now let's talk about
audio blogging. How does everything that I just said applies to audio blogging. So obviously
blogging, audio content, audio blogging. Yeah, that makes sense. But how to call it.
So we don't talk about audio blogging anymore. We haven't for many years, 15 actually, because
now we're talking about podcasting. Podcasting was, is a word that was invented by a journalist,
Ben Hormesly in the Guardian in 2004. And we've been talking about podcasting ever since.
So who created podcasting? Who are the founders of podcasting? Well, that may sound stupid,
but there isn't any podcasting without podcasts. Podcasting is about podcasts. It's about content.
You can have the best technology ever. If you don't have any content, at the end of
the day it's going to be useless. So these are some of the, the oldest and most famous
podcasts. These are my choice. If you ask someone else, you'll probably get others.
So the first one is the illusion of independent radio from 1989. Of course, at that time,
it wasn't on Twitch. It wasn't on Apple podcast. It was broadcasted manually on cassette tapes
and copied from tape to tape. But still, it's considered by many as the first podcast ever.
And as you can see, the original title, it was from Russia. Then in 2004, the daily source
code was a podcast that was broadcasted every day by Adam Curry, a kind of technical podcast.
Then the year after the podcasting, do-it-yourself guide by Todd Cochrane, 2006, the Lens and
the Sun podcast experiment by obviously Lens and the Sun. There are many others. I won't
spend more time naming all of them. Just 2014, serial by Sarah Koenig. This one is important
because it's the 350 million download podcasts. So that made a difference because we went
from a model where, yeah, you have some nerds talking to other nerds and there were like
a bunch of them here, a bunch of them there, and yeah. But now we're talking big numbers.
So that's for the content. Now, the architects who designed it, who is at the origin of podcasting
and the technology. So pop quiz. There is no technology here, just the names and the
dates. So 1993, who knows what invention is behind that? MP3, yeah, correct. MP3. 1995,
anyone knows? RSS, yes, correct. 2000. Yeah, enclosures. Enclosures in RSS. 2003. Yeah,
that before the Daily Source Code, actually the Daily Source Code was a way to apply this.
It's pushing your podcast to your iPod. And at the same time, we got iPodder.org, which
was a repository and index for podcasts. And 2005. Speak louder. No, not the iPod. The
iPod was earlier. This is podcasting iTunes. Okay, so that's the technology. But what's
a podcast? Well, there are several definitions for a podcast. There is no official definition
for a podcast. Some people say it's a content that you can download and listen to whenever
you want to, wherever you want to. Some say it's an audio content. And my definition,
the one I like the best, and I think it's probably should be the only one, if you ask
me, is Adam Curry's one. A podcast is an RSS feed with an enclosure. So, an RSS feed and
an enclosure. That's a podcast. So, example, this is not a podcast. This is a podcast.
I don't know if you could see the difference. I'm going to show it to you again. So, not
a podcast. A podcast. So, for the one who did not upload, this is not a podcast because
there is no RSS feed. You can listen to it. You can download it. You can listen to it
wherever you want to. But you cannot get an RSS feed. So, you cannot select and choose
the application on which you want to listen to it. And you are in a closed ecosystem here.
This is Spotify. Obviously, you are recognized. So, this is not the open Internet. So, this
is why I do not consider this as a podcast. Whereas, this is a podcast. And it's, you
can say, you can tell, it's better looking. So, if you remember the architects, in 2005,
Apple podcast, which was iTunes podcast at that time, was launched. And it was launched
by Apple, by Steve Jobs, right after Adam Curry, who was at the beginning, he was involved
technically and also he was still a podcaster. He gave to Steve Jobs himself the index that
he and some other guys developed at that time, which was called iPodder.org, which was an
index with 4,000 podcasts. Remember that number, 4,000 podcasts. This is the index that we
had at that time. And it was all the podcasts that we could listen to and at least search
for within the iPodder index. And this is a changeover, because at that specific time
Apple took care of podcasting. They did a pretty decent job, because they got no money
from it, just marketing image, but they did like pretty much everything in the podcast
industry since that moment. So, let's recap. Here you can see 1993 MP3, RSS, RSS plus MP3,
to the iPods, iTunes, and nothing, nothing. So, that's not a bug. That's not PowerPoint
breaking my slide, because this is impressed. This is not PowerPoint. And nothing happened.
So, this is what I call the status quo of podcasting. Meaning, for 10 to 15 years, nothing
happened, and it stayed the same. You can see here, so we still have hosting and indexes
and apps and lines going from all the way crossing, which means that podcasting is still
decentralized. And that's a very important point, because over the years, let me go back
a little bit. Here, you see that too much. We had YouTube, Facebook, and many new technologies
that disrupted the markets, but they're not centralized. When you're on Facebook, you're
not on the Internet. You're in Facebook. When you are on YouTube, you're not on the Internet.
You're in YouTube. Whereas for podcasting, well, it's decentralized, and it's still decentralized.
So that's good news. But at the same time, not a single feature has been added for 15
years. Try to think about this. In which industry, we saw no innovation for 15 years, and we're
talking about the Internet. Like, not a single feature for 15 years. Nothing happened. And
at the same time, we saw the core of it, RSS, we saw it dying many times, mostly killed
by Google, many times. So at the end of the day, yeah, what's happening to podcasting,
is it dead? But no, it's still alive. But between these 10 years, so there's the 10 years, another
word I cannot pronounce. There was no development because of a chicken and egg problem. If you
are a podcast hosting company or developing a hosting solution, if you want to add a new
feature, well, you need an application to implement it. Otherwise, it's useless. No
one will say it, so you won't do it. And if you are developing a podcast listening app,
well, it's useless to implement a new feature because if there is no hosting company implementing
it, it's really useless. So everyone is waiting. So a solution would be to ask the one in
the middle who's taking care of the index, Apple, to make the first step, well, try to
ask something to Apple and see how it goes. So yeah, nothing happened for all these years.
And then, 2020, Adam Curry and Dave Jones decided to reboot it to make a podcasting 2.0. So
podcasting 2.0 is an open specification. And by open, I mean it's open source. And it's
open to anyone. So each one of you can come and play with us and say, I need this. I want
this. Podcasting is missing. This important feature or this feature that is not important
to anyone but me, doesn't matter. It's an open specification open to everyone. Really,
I mean it. And technically, it's an M space that extends the podcasting DTD, the one
that was created by Apple and that everyone has been following for years. Even Google
is following the Apple DTD now. They dropped their, they had one but they eventually dropped
it. So if you go there, you will see all the new features which are usually new tags that
had been added to podcast. So podcasting 2.0 is about decentralizing and returning to
open source. So you, everyone can be a part of it and everyone can play together. That's
really important. But this is not how we are going to convince users and listeners that
this is the right solution. It's almost impossible to tell people you shouldn't be on Facebook
because it's not open source. And you don't know what they're doing with your data. You
have to be on something that's open and decentralized and federated. People just don't care. It's
useless. If you do that, you're going to be exhausted before you have convinced two people.
The only way to convince people is to be better than closed solutions and closed ecosystem.
So you have to focus on user experience and features. And this is what podcasting 2.0
is about. So there are many, many, many new features that are in podcasting 2.0. These
are only the ones that have been implemented yet. So alternate enclosures. Yes, because
now we're using mp3, but mp3 is 30 years old. Maybe we like better m4a or org or flag or
dolbyatmos or low bandwidth encoding files. Well, how do you do that with the usual DTD?
You cannot. With podcasting 2.0, you can do that. You can have multiple enclosures for
one episode. Bustograms. Who knows what is Bustogram? Okay. Like 5%. Bustogram is a way
to send message, money, and love to a podcaster. So you're listening to a podcast and suddenly
something, you find it's really interesting. Oh, I love that. You click, you send money.
So it's Bitcoin over the LND network. You send a message, and you send a timestamp.
So the podcaster knows at what time, within the episode, this Bustogram was sent and
you receive money and message and love. Chapters. If you want to have chapters, of course you
can have chapters within an mp3 file, but let's say if you have alternate enclosures
and if you want to modify the chapters afterwards, and if you want the chapters to be indexed,
to be seen without having to download the whole files, well, having chapters in a JSON file
can be pretty, pretty much useful. Episode and season. Well, what if you want to give
a title to a season and not just a number and to make it more easy to see an index?
Anything, if you have Patreon or PayPal, you can put that within the RSS feed so that it
shows up directly within the podcast app, the podcast player. UID. I cannot understand
why we didn't have that earlier. If you have a podcast, very often you move it from a domain
name to another, from a hosting company to another, how can you tell that these two RSS
feeds are actually the same podcast? Well, before podcasting 2.0, you can't. Now you
have an ID that doesn't change. Live, because podcasting is very often about live events.
You're talking live, you're talking to everyone, and also making a podcast, and the live will
be the podcast, but you want the users to be able to get a notification within the podcast
app that says, oh, your favorite podcast is now live. Click here and listen to it. Location,
because you want your content to be easily found, and sometimes it's about a specific
place. How about geolocation? I think there's something called Google Map, but obviously
nothing related to podcasting. With podcasting 2.0, if your podcast is about tourism, well,
you can pinpoint an episode or a podcast. Then you can put it on a map. You can put
your podcast on a map. Locked, we've seen podcasts that were copied and monetized, specifically
on Anchor, on the Anchor platform. Some people found out that their podcast had been copied,
copied on Anchor, and then monetized. They didn't know about it. So here, it won't prevent
the copy, but at least it will say, please do not copy that podcast so that the hosting
company knows that this podcast shouldn't be copied. Medium, because podcasting is not
just only about talking. It can be music. It can be many, many other media. OP3 is an
open source, open data, analytic platform that allows you to share your analytics with
third party. Person is about saying, this content was made by this host, with this guest,
and this sound engineer. Podcasting is a way to say, hey, my RSS feed just got updated,
and you send that information into the Hive blockchain so that you don't have to query
an RSS feed every minute to know when it was updated. Imagine how many requests Apple has
to do to get notified where all the podcasts are updated. And actually, they are not notified.
They fetch the answer. Sat-streaming, almost the same as Boostogram, but it's while you
are listening to a content, like every second. Social interact is about talking with your
audience from any app. So you say to the podcast app, this is where the discussion is taking
place. This is where you should interact with the podcaster. And it can be, of course, on
the podcaster platform. It can be on the Fediverse. It doesn't have to be on a closed platform
where you don't have control on your content and on the content that your audience creates.
Soundbites is a way to make a small byte of sound, obviously. Transcripts, which does not
exist on podcasting except for podcasting 2.0, which is a real shame because accessibility
is mandatory in Europe. It is mandatory in the US. And still, all the big platforms seem
to not to care about this. Well, podcasting 2.0 brings a way to add transcriptions to the
podcast and a transcription that the podcaster is responsible for. So as a podcaster, you
can correct or do whatever you want to in the transcript and the transcript can be in
the original language or it can be a translation. So you can make your podcast available to
people who are hard of hearing or people who just don't speak your language very well.
And the TXT, which is like the same, the DNS TXT record works. Right now, if you want to
go on a podcast platform as a podcaster and you want to prove your ownership, the only
way, the apple way, is to put your email address within the RSS feed and this will allow you
to get a lot of spam. Well, with this, the platform who wants to verify your ownership
will say, please put that token into your RSS feed, you put it and then you're good,
you're gone and you don't have to share your email address. So all these features, this
is not a wish list, this exists, this works, this has been implemented and it's working
now. It's working now in many applications, platforms and services. And of course, if
your podcast is a podcasting 2.0 podcast, it will also work on all the non-podcasting
2.0 platforms, it is backward compatible. So where are we now? There are over 4,000
podcasts that have declared the podcasting 2.0 namespace in their feed. And as I said,
interoperability is the key. Meaning, this works only because we are working together.
It's not a close silo and this is why it works. Here, there are only a few of the platforms
that are implementing it. So on the left, you see the hosting services. On the right,
the players and in the middle, the indexes, there are many others and they are all working
together. So that's pretty nice. But let's not forget that the battle is not over. The
FAM, we talk about Saga for podcasting, Spotify, Apple, Google and Amazon. They won't quit
that easily. Last example, Spotify decided to implement chapters, but they didn't use
that. They used their own way. So we need to say the word and to use it. But that won't
be enough. Podcasting 2.0 has a powerful ally, which is podcast index. Podcast index is a
podcast index. That's pretty convenient. That has all the podcasts. And it's open source,
open data, meaning that anyone can have access to the index. Imagine before the year 2020,
as a podcaster, if you want to exist, you need to ask for Apple to grant you permission
to add your podcast in their index. You don't have right access. You need to ask permission.
And if you say bad words, you're not sure that they'll accept you. And as a podcast
app, if you want your users to be able to find podcasts, so to look for them, as the
podcast app, you need to ask Apple to grant you permission to read the index so that your
users will send some queries that will end up in Apple podcast index so that you can
say, yeah, you're looking for a podcast talking about whatever. This is what we found. So
if Apple doesn't want you to continue working with them, from one minute to the next one,
they can ban you, they can revoke the access, and your app becomes useless to all your users.
So with the podcast index, you can get an API key, you can get access, you can query
as much as you want to, and if you're not comfortable with that because there's still
a centralized database and a centralized API server, you can download the database, the
podcast index is a database, you can download it, you go to podcastindex.org, you click
download and you download the whole database, all of them. So everything is on the podcast
index except stuff that is illegal, obviously, but there's no preference. They're not making
choices for what should be allowed and what should not be allowed. And right now, it is
twice as big as the Apple podcast index. So that's four million podcasts. So remember
in 2005, we had four thousand, now four million. So if we recap again, the void is not blank
anymore. We have podcasting 2.0, and we can work on this. So let's see how this works.
We'll see how it works on Castopod. So what is Castopod? It's a podcast hosting solution.
It's open source, it's AGPL3. It relies on PHP MySQL, Codignator 4. And of course, it
is podcasting 2.0 compatible. It implements chapters, funding, GUID, location, locked,
OP3 persons on by transcript, social interact, and social interact, it's for that it uses
the activity pump protocol, meaning it's connected to the Fediverse and to Mastodon, obviously.
So where you're on Castopod, you publish an episode, it's going to show up on your Mastodon
feed as a user, and you'll be able to like it, share it, comment it. And the stars, the
comments will come back on your Castopod server. So when you interact with your audience, the
reactions from your audience are on your server. There is no middleman between you as a content
creator and your audience. No technical person involved, no legal entity involved. So no
one can pull the plug, and no one can send you their lawyer. And why are we developing
that? Because we love you, and we think you deserve it. You deserve free speech. All of
you. And your love that you send back to us pays our rent. Or it doesn't. So in order
to be sustainable, Castopod has been funded by Adores, by a company, by NLNet, the NLNet
Foundation. We are an open collective, so if you want to be a part of it, because we
value everything that you can bring, time, talent, treasure, anything, go to open collective.
We got a lot of value from you. For instance, we translated Castopod in French, because
as some of you may have noticed, I have a slightly French accent. And Castopod has been
translated in 20 languages, 21, I think. Not 100%, but almost the public part. Chinese,
Spanish, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, many of them. And we provide paid hosting
on Castopod.com. So if you want to host your podcast on Castopod, but you don't want to
take care of this, you don't want to go through the trouble of self-hosting, you can talk
to me. Or go to Castopod.com. So if you want to know more about Castopod, just go to Castopod.org
and you'll find everything that you need to know there. If you want to install it, go
to docs.castopod.org and you will find many ways to install it. It's PHP MySQL, so with
a basic Apache, ModPHP, MySQL, MariaDB, Parcona, whatever, you'll install it. We have Docker
images, it works on Unohost, I saw some guys installing it on Synology, NAS, very easy
to install. So what does it look like? So here, this is the logging page, and it has
nothing interesting. It's just a logging page, but it works. And if you forget your password,
there's a logging link. On the dashboard, you'll get all the information
that you need for your podcast, the storage, the bandwidth, how much you've been using.
But the thing is, all the information and the analytics, they are yours. The number of listeners,
they are on your server. This is not Google Analytics. You have the raw data, of course
it's DDPR compliant, but everything is yours. Now, if you want to create a podcast, it's
going to take like 30 seconds, and you're up and running. If you want to create a new
episode, it's going to take 30 seconds, and you're up and running. Of course, I'm not
counting the time that you need to record the podcast, but that's up to you.
Then you'll be able to listen to the podcast, of course, on the website. Castopod has a
pretty decent website. I haven't said it, but it's podcasting, one-point-all compatible,
so you will be able to listen to your podcast on any platform, including Spotify, Apple
Podcast, Deezer, Amazon, everywhere. If your content is geo-located, you'll be able to
see it on the beautiful map, so open street map, obviously. You can have private content,
like premium content if you want to make a pay subscription, or maybe just for your friends.
When you are connected to the Fediverse, people will be able to interact with your content,
and you will see the answers back on your Castopod server. Here, this comment is a
mastodon comment, I think. It comes back to your server. It's yours. Here, this is the
OP3 website. This was developed by John Sporlock. This is an analytics website that allows you
to have statistics analytics on a third-party platform, which is really convenient if you
want to be able to share that with third parties. You have a third party involved, counting
how many listeners you have, but it's open source and open data. Of course, everything
that, again, works everywhere. This is a podcast addict, so you can see the transcription.
It's showing on your phone. Still podcast addict. Here, you can see the person who was
involved in the creation of the podcast. I think we're done. As a conclusion, how can
you help? How can you be a part of it? Well, very easy. Just go to newpodcastapps.com and
make your choice. Find an app, find a service provider, a hosting company, hosting whatever.
It doesn't have to be Castopod. Of course, it's the best, but you don't have to believe
me. You can make your own decision. And stop telling your, as a podcaster, stop telling
your audience, go to Apple podcast and give me some stars. No. These are your stars, not
Apple stars. So if you want to know more about this subject, the pod further 2.0, which will
be in the podcast magazine number 2. I think it's going to be out in 10 days or so. It's
in French. If you don't understand French, it will also be on Castopod's blog. You have
the URL here. There's an RSS feed because RSS is not for podcasting only. You can also
read all of the articles. The slides are on the first website. And since we're talking
about podcasting, further listening, there's a podcast which is conveniently called podcasting
2.0, which talks about podcasting 2.0. And it's hosted by Adam Curry and Dave Jones.
It's every Friday. And you can listen to it live. So like if you're using a podcasting
2.0 app, you'll get the notification. You'll click on it and you'll be able to listen to
it live. Or after, if you don't want to listen to it live, podcast weekly review by Sam Thethy
and James Cridland. They talk about podcasting 2.0 a lot. And James Cridland also has a daily
podcast which is called Podnews. I highly recommend these three. And thank you. We have four minutes
for questions. Do you have any questions? Okay. Hi. Is it working? Okay. So amazing talk.
I have just one question. It's very few time. What about advertising bird in podcast? Is
there some way to advertising and advertising review podcast? There are many, many ways
for advertiser podcast. At Adores, my company, we work on recommendation and paid recommendation.
Historically, there were two kinds of ads on the podcast, either from the host and it
can be a host read or automatically inserted or on the app. We still have the two of them.
I hope that eventually we can find a way to make the host and the app work together so
that they built bigger audience together. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. I have two questions.
How do I move my existing feed if I want to host it on Kastapod? That's my first question.
What features which are in the podcasting 2.0 spec? You have this whole list of all
these features. Some of you have implemented. What are you working on next to implement
in Kastapod? First one, Kastapod has an import feature. As soon as you have your Kastapod
instance ready, you copy paste the RSS feed URL, you click import and it fetches everything.
About the features, we don't have all of them implemented yet. We're working on them one
step at a time. Yes, hi. So you said the podcast index don't host anything illegal. So what
your restriction is the podcast index in? Sorry, you said the podcast index doesn't
host any illegal content. So I wonder what your restriction, the podcast index is hosted
in. I'm sorry, I didn't hear your question. So you said the podcast index doesn't host
anything illegal, but it allows everything legal. As long as they know it. What your
restriction is it hosted in? What country's laws? Is it United States or Germany?
So it's a U.S. corporation. It's a U.S. company. So I assume it's U.S. laws. But the only
example that I saw are mostly people who copied podcasts. Something that you have to know
is that the podcast industry is still very young. It's a very young 20 years old industry.
Young because it hasn't been monetized as other industries. So when there is not that
much money involved, you get less problems. Obviously, when it's bigger and when the money
is flowing, we'll have some other issues. Yeah, that's for sure.
A very few questions because the time is up. My question is about the transcription. Does
Castopod help us to transcript or do we have to upload our own transcripts, our own tools?
Right now, Castopod allows you to embed your transcripts. But we are working on the solution
that will make it for you. We've been working on that for years and it's going to be out
very soon.
We have just a few questions on the chat. One is does podcasting 2.0 address stuff like
integrating BitTorrent with podcast RSS? It does not address BitTorrent yet. It's pretty
hard because it's pretty hard to get something that works fluently. That's something that's
on the table, but it's not going to be here very, very soon.
The next question was about hosting providers.
What do you think about podcast hosting providers that conform to the standard but host short
version on the actual podcast forcing you to download their app to finish listening
to it while they're doing whatever they want to? I just think you shouldn't use them.
You should go someplace where you have control, not the hosting company.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. If you have other questions, I'll be around.