Buying a house and finding a new podcast have more in common than you'd think. You aren't always in the market for both, and there's a problem if you have too many of either. Can lessons from one inform the other?

I remain skeptical that anyone will ever build the YouTube of podcasting. But the Zillow of podcasting? Now that's an interesting proposition, weird as though it may sound.

Zillow flipped the script and put would-be homebuyers in complete control of the "discovery" part of home buying. Today, anyone with an internet connection can use Zillow to view almost every property for sale, almost anywhere in the entire country. 

So what does this have to do with podcasting? Especially when most podcasts are publicly listed in every app and directory along with millions of other podcasts?

Zillow's trick wasn't just giving homebuyers access to a lot more listings. It was how Zillow unpacked and exposed data—lots of data—for every property. That's what a Zillow-like service could bring to podcasting. 

How about recommendations that are (finally) based on criteria you either establish or are inferred from your listening activities that give a much higher degree of certainty? The recommendation engines in podcasting today are rudimentary at best. Imagine a new discovery system that atomized, ingested, and analyzed podcasts, making push-based discovery demonstrably better.

Or how about a sort of "open house" for podcasts that lets the listener experience what it's like to "live in" a podcast for a while. Some type of lower level of commitment than subscribing to or following a show could be attractive to listeners who don't want to risk the hassle of unsubscribing to or unfollowing a show that wasn't a perfect fit. 

Those are just two quick examples of the benefits a service like this might offer podcast listeners. But there is a slew of challenges.

The good news is that most datasets are public and have adequate APIs. But the bad news is that those data sets are woefully inadequate to perform the type of analysis needed here. Anyone seriously trying to develop a system like this has to invest time and resources to create new complementary data sets. Who's going to pay for that?

A service like this wades into very treacherous waters. Just like Zillow pissed off many of the extant real estate industry big networks, powerful podcasters, or dominant listening/discovery platforms, may see this as a threat and fight against it.

But the biggest hurdle to overcome is the one that makes this a winning service: listener adoption. This new service cannot be incrementally better than what listeners go through today. It has to be orders of magnitude better. Like Zillow was.

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Links

• Getting more than 10K downloads per episode? Talk to Gumball.fm! - evoterra.link/gumball 
• Podchaser.com
• Is Podcast Listening Too Big Of An Ask? - podcastpontifications.com/episode/is-podcast-listening-too-big-of-an-askpodcastpontifications.com/episode/is-podcast-listening-too-big-of-an-ask
• Over 100K active podcasters trust Buzzsprout. - evoterra.link/buzz
• Serious about podcasting? Join the Advancing Podcasting Community today! - AdvancingPodcasting.xyz

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Podcast Pontifications is a production of Simpler Media. New episodes are released four times a week, providing ideas and questions every serious podcaster should be thinking about.

It's created and hosted by Evo Terra. Follow him on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come. Allie Press assists with the production and transcription of the show.

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Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th. Abortion is a basic healthcare need for the millions of people who can become pregnant. Everyone should have the freedom to decide what’s best for themselves and their families, including when it comes to ending a pregnancy. This decision has dire consequences for individual health and safety, and could have harsh repercussions for other landmark decisions. Restricting access to comprehensive reproductive care, including abortion, threatens the health and independence of all Americans. Even if you live in a state where abortion rights are upheld, access to safe medical procedures shouldn’t be determined by location, and it shouldn't be the privilege of a small few. You can help by donating to local abortion funds. To find out where to donate for each state, visit donations4abortion.com. If you or someone you know needs help, or if you want to get more involved, here are 5 resources: 1. ShoutYourAbortion.com is a campaign to normalize abortion. 2. DontBanEquality.com is a campaign for companies to take a stand against abortion restrictions. 3. Abortion.cafe has information about where to find clinics. 4. PlanCPills.org provides early at-home abortion pills that you can keep in your medicine cabinet. 5. Choice.CRD.co has a collection of these resources and more. We encourage you to speak up! And spread the word.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy