Podcasts Are Not Music (Premium)

Product design is difficult as, I’m sure, is brand promotion. But if the mobile wave has taught us anything, it’s that tools that exist primarily on this platform need to be focused and concise. And not jack of all trades that try to perform multiple functions.

You do see exceptions to this rule, of course. Microsoft, for example, has semi-successfully squeezed subsets of the functionality from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneDrive into its standalone Microsoft 365 app. And Microsoft, again, has semi-successfully combined email, calendar, and contact management into its Outlook Mobile app.

But it’s perhaps telling that both of those exceptions come from a company that has decades-long roots in legacy desktop computing. And that the most successful mobile apps do one thing, and one thing only. And there are examples of companies that tried to bundle—as Meta did with its Facebook and Messenger apps—and that are now rolling back those changes so that each is a standalone app again. You know, as God intended.

This is what makes the proliferation of podcasting functionality in music apps so frustrating. Podcasts are not music. And below the surface, I see a troubling trend where the focus of these apps is shifting away from music broadly, where they are deemphasizing some of the music-related choices we now enjoy to push an agenda promoting subscription services only. That is, where music apps today offer some combination of cloud music collections and our own libraries, those same apps are now shifting to be all about the services, meaning music services and now podcasting services. So they’re not so much music apps anymore but rather fronts for paid services.

This started, as it always does in this space, with Spotify, a music service that started as a European curiosity that has since taken over the market. I’ve never liked Spotify from a usability perspective, and its evolution over time has only made things worse, but I can’t deny its popularity. In January, the firm revealed that it now has over 205 million paid subscribers and an incredible 489 million total monthly active users. But it doesn’t promote itself as the number one music service (which it is). Instead it is, in its own words, “the #1 audio network,” and the content it highlights along with that is almost entirely podcast-based.

There is an obvious nonsense of having to switch between podcasts, which are typically spoken word, and music, which is not, in its app. But it is more amazing to me that Spotify’s podcasts initiatives have proven to be a financial disaster, and after spending years spending millions of dollars to gain exclusive access to dubious podcasting talents, Spotify, a firm that has never made a profit, is now scaling back. Not on promoting podcasts in its apps, but rather on paying for exclusive access to content that, frankly, should be free to all anyway.

Let me be clear, again. Podcasts are not music.

Spotify has turned into a sad TikTok clone with its latest update, and that is both hilarious and sad to me. As is the fact that it can’t muster enough excitement for music to add the lossless and spatial audio tier it promised two years ago.

But seriously, screw Spotify. I can’t stand this app anyway. The problem is, it’s not just Spotify. Oh no.

In late February, Google announced that it would kill the standalone Google Podcasts app, which was nearly perfect to me aside from its lack of Sonos compatibility, and bring podcasts to YouTube Music, the music service I use, prefer, and recommend. So Google is going to muck up an app and service that I love by adding something I do not need or want. (I use Pocket Casts for podcasts for all kinds of reasons, and I recommend it as well.)

Here’s the thing.

As the music industry evolved, we went from physical media to purchased digital music with DRM to purchased digital music without DRM to music streaming services. As an older feller, I owned vinyl records, cassette tapes, and audio CDs over the years, and I have always enjoyed making mix tapes, mix CDs, and now playlists of the music I enjoy. And I have a vast collection of legacy music stored digitally, only some of which is not available in music services. So I do pay for two services—YouTube Music for me and Spotify for the wife and kids—and the service I use, YouTube Music, has advantages that let me combine those things. That is, I can make playlists that include music from the YouTube Music library, videos from YouTube, and my own music. This is crucial to me.

Other music services, like Spotify, don’t offer the YouTube video bit, of course, but they also make it very difficult to add my own music in a seamless way across my devices. But with this shift to podcasts, one wonders—fears—-that YouTube Music will simply go down the same path. Is this the start of the enshittification of YouTube Music, where it, like Spotify, will emphasize paid services over my own stuff and mix two types of incompatible entertainment together?

I hope not. But I am worried. And as the alternatives dwindle, I find myself in the same situation that a lot of people are in, where we suddenly start getting nostalgic for the past and consider doing things the old way. Which in the case of music would mean just buying (or maybe even illegally downloading) the content I like and using that instead of a paid service. This is a radical step backward, forced on us by companies that are out for their needs, not ours. That’s how enshittification works.

There is one alternative left should YouTube Music fall, but I do not want to make this switch. Apple Music also allows you to combine music from its paid music streaming service with your own music, though you must pay them $25 for this privilege if you don’t subscribe to Apple Music. This service, incidentally, is called iTunes Match, and that name, which is legacy, should give you pause. Is this something Apple will simply kill one day? Almost certainly.

I’m just enough of a survivalist with a just-in-case mentality that I have always paid for iTunes Match and will continue to do so. I just hope I don’t have to pull the trigger on this doomsday scenario. Because I can’t stand Apple Music either.

This is not good.