Podcasting's Discovery Problem just got weirder
An app helps me discover a show - and I can't figure out how to share it.
The journey of me trying to share a show with you.
Every Wednesday on this substack I do What I Am Listening To Wednesday, WILT Wednesday for those of you who like branding.
I am trying to share this episode with you.
It’s a well made doumentary-ish about how humans have affected the climate.
Let’s back up.
I stumbled across an app called Hark. Maybe I am late to the Hark party, or maybe I am first to the party, I can’t tell.
What Hark does is take clips from podcasts. I’ll let someone else discuss if this is “promotion” or “fair use” or “transformative use” or something else, and only Jon Jon and Tommy know how Pod Save America feels about it.
Anyway, wherever these clips come from, Hark makes nice packages from them. I enjoyed one a collection of clips about last week’s debate, and the one with entertainment clips (TV show recaps) seems promising.
On Sunday I was served “Your Weekly Hark” - a collection of clips some AI thought I would dig. The AI guessed correctly and served me the episode of Ideas mentioned above. I decided to add it to WILT Wednesday.
But here’s the thing - and MAN IS PODCAST DISCOVERY AWFUL, even though Hark surfaced the show, I can’t figure out how to easily share it with you. I can email myself a link to the Hark version and have you listen on Hark, but that’s not what consumers want.
I searched for the episode on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and can’t find it. I can find it on the CBC website, and it says it is from “one year ago” but I can’t find a nice one-click solution for you to listen right now.
So let’s recap:
Someone made an episode.
It was good.
Someone made an app and helped me discover the episode.
I’d like to think I am somewhat expert at podcasting and I still can’t figure out how to get it to you in a one-click solution on a commonly used app.
Wow, just wow.
Anyway, I have been playing with Hark for a few days and am digging it. We’re closer to a solution, but we aren’t there yet. Come on Apple, you can do this!!!!! Buy Hark, Pocket Casts and add some Podcasting 2.0 wallet solutions and we might have something! Also buy Caloroga Shark Media while you’re buying things!
The D key on my mac is sticking so expect more typos than normal.
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