[…] being able to say, “wherever you get your podcasts” is a radical statement. Because what it represents is the triumph of exactly the kind of technology that’s supposed to be impossible: open, empowering tech that’s not owned by any one company, that can’t be controlled by any one company, and that allows people to have ownership over their work and their relationship with their audience.
What podcasting holds in the promise of its open format is the proof that an open web can still thrive and be relevant, that it can inspire new systems that are similarly open to take root and grow.
Easy to do when it’s just audio files with no user interaction though. Neat that it’s continued existence in this manner at least, even if the big companies have steered toward trying to be the podcast platform.
All the centralisation in podcasting is the content delivery network (where ads are placed for the commercial ones). Where the feed is hosted it’s fairly irrelevant.
The reason companies want to control the podcast networks is because of targeted ads. They want to inject the ad at the time of downloading to personalize the ad to the person it thinks is listening. That’s the best kind of advertising in their eyes. They can’t do that process without owning the network or at least having some stake in it.