Keeping up with developments

[craigconstantine]

How do you keep up with what’s happening in our industry?

For exampe, this is an interesting development about video podcasting…

“If we don’t nail this, we’ll be essentially telling podcasters that their only real options for podcast video are YouTube and Spotify.” The Podcast Standards Project has published its thinking behind HLS delivery of video podcasting via open RSS. Benefits include one RSS feed that can contain both audio and video; and adaptive quality for all consumers, as well as potentially producing consumption analytics, and lowering bandwidth bills. HLS streams can still be downloadable if required.

That’s from an issue of Podnews, A new dawn: Kast Media out of bankruptcy.

…but I’d have missed it, if I didn’t have the habit of skimming through PodNews issues.

Given the ol’ adage that one should first learn “how things are done” and then go “break the rules”, it seems to me that keeping up with our industry is a key part of being a professional (which has nothing to do with being paid.)

So, do you keep up? Is keeping up enough? …or is there also a level of “I tried it, too” that you feel is required to be a professional at this thing we love?

ɕ

[DavidB (David Bourne)]

Interesting stuff, Craig. Thanks for sharing.

This is the paragraph that helped me make sense of it.

Traditional RSS enclosures provide limited insight into actual listening behavior – hosting platforms know when files are downloaded, but not if they’re actually consumed. HLS streaming, however, could provide detailed analytics about actual playback: how long listeners engage, where they drop off, and which segments are replayed. This would give creators and hosting platforms YouTube-level insights while maintaining the open, decentralized nature of RSS podcasting.