Good thoughts by Dustin Bluck about the decline of indie podcast apps. While I was reading, I kept thinking “we need to do video!” and then I got to that part:
Video podcasts should be embraced yesterday. There’s absolutely nothing about RSS that demands it be audio-only. Podcasts have never even been audio-only. There’s at least some evidence that video time is replacing audio. This is only going to get worse.
Yes! and recently (almost as if it's been in the works for some time) the rate of podcast hosts publishing high-quality video in podcast feeds using HLS has gone up quite a bit, thanks mostly to Transistor and Flightcast
Keep an eye on them here: https://hls.livewire.io/
I love #PocketCasts. my guess is podcasts are struggling because they can't go viral, like a YT video. but I don't think an algo is necessary. they just need to be directly boostable. this would be possible if podcatchers supported distribution via ActivityPub in addition to RSS. kinda like how we see WordPress and Ghost putting out articles that are also social media posts.
One super-annoying thing about the podcast pivot to video: Many podcasters now think of video as the normal way to experience their podcasts, so they’ll regularly refer to images they’re displaying — images I can’t see, because I only listen to podcasts when I’m walking, driving, or lying in bed with my eyes closed. Podcasters increasingly assume that people are looking at screens every minute of the day. But wasn’t it always one of the virtues of podcasts that you don’t have to look at them?
@ayjay Yes, I’ve noticed this too and it’s annoying. Slightly better, sometimes a host will say, “If you’re listening to the podcast version…” and then describe what is on screen.
@manton I’m hoping (but not expecting) that the two roads will clearly diverge and some people will just do video while others will just do audio.
@manton I wish there was a way to use a hosting service like Transistor for all podcasts I do in the same way AT Proto works. I don’t know the magic. 😝
@manton much of the appeal for me with podcasts is that they’re audio only. But, I get that many others prefer video
@iChris Can you tell me a little more about how you’d like it to work? For me, I’d want to post to my blog or podcast site, have a podcast feed, and then it goes out to the fediverse too.
@ayjay I agree. Honestly, I think a lot of people want to do “video podcasts” because they want to be seen. Frankly, they want it on YouTube to make money. This is just another philosophical (with a small “p”) brick wall for me to stubbornly smash my head against.
@manton I found the piece interesting and incontestable. My question is whether there is any information about whether the quality of the image(s) matters. I don’t want to craft videos or show two talking heads, but I suppose I could manage one nice image.
@manton I love video podcasts, but they are all on YouTube. No major podcast I watch/listen to also releases video inside their RSS.
If you support video in your app there isn’t a lot of content to watch, and it’s all hosted on YouTube anyways.
Not sure about YouTube’s TOS but I don’t see why an app doesn’t find the videos from their channel and just post them together in a single app. Choose your watching/listening medium.
@jeremycherfas Good question. My guess is most podcast episodes do not include custom artwork for each show, but it has been supported in MP3 chapters for years.
@manton Video killed the radio star? I also put some - probably wrong - thoughts to paper - dpclark.blog/2026/07/2…
@manton I remember long ago in the Diggnation days there being a video podcast and torrent app called Miro that always seemed like a cool idea, while also still just a bit too limited in enough killer content to make it stick.
Hard for anyone to beat YouTube now, which is often the best algorithm and comments on the internet for things I consume there.
