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Thoughts on “Are podcasts killing music or just wasting our time?”

My friend Rebekah sent me a link on Twitter to a post by Chris Richards titled Are podcasts killing music or just wasting our time?

I typed up my quick unfiltered first impressions on the bus ride to work yesterday, but didn’t want to try to cram them into a tweet thread, so here they are for Rebekah and anyone else to see:


I just finished reading his post. His points kind of confuse me to be honest.

I’ll agree that there is a bar for audio quality for anything I listen to, but that bar also moves based on the content. If the content is gold, then the audio quality can take a back seat. If the audio quality is pristine, then the content can be extremely normal and I’ll still enjoy it. It’s not one or the other, it’s a combination of the two.

That said, anyone creating anything should absolutely strive to make the highest quality thing they can, and there’s nothing wrong with wanting that as a listener.1

Ultimately, his “points” don’t hold up to much scrutiny. His question is basically, “How can you all listen to this shit?” The same can be said about pop music, and the answer is invariably, “Because we don’t care as much about the things you care about.” And that’s fine.

  1. I wonder often if the strive to release regular content is a factor in lower quality podcasts. If podcast producers weren’t trying to release an episode once a month or once a week, perhaps they could take the time to polish things even more. Why not just release it when it’s ready? Thanks to the magic of RSS, listeners will be automatically notified when a new episode is released. Musicians would kill for that ability, but musicians never stick to releasing their music on a regular schedule, and they still find ways to create great things. 

Post Metadata
date Apr 24th, 2019
tags article, music, podcasts