But we try to walk this line where it should also get better. It is in our interest that our creators get as wide distribution as possible, because what is in our creators' interest is in our interest. And this is the reason why we make sure to stay compatible with RSS. And on that note, I think the RSS standard is a great thing. But that was true for the others as well: There were standards around texts, there were standards around photos and video and so forth. The RSS standard was the only thing that existed for a very long time. But I think that once audio is inside a single software stack - and this is what we're trying to do - it can also start developing much faster than it has. Apple and iTunes did a lot of important work in creating that. And it was and is a fantastic thing, because that's what brought it scale. And they started moving at the speed of software iteration, instead of the speed of standardization bodies.Īnd obviously, podcasts came to exist through standardization. They got enveloped inside a single software stack, from end to end, from creator to consumer. What happened to these other mediums is that for various reasons, at some point they kind of all became software. So sure, the formula existed and the innovation cycle was there, it was just very, very slow.Ī large part of that was probably because the innovation cycle was very broad, based on a decision between many players, where you eventually arrived at these lowest common denominator solutions. And I think between the inception of the idea of adding pictures to a text message, and the MMS standard actually shipping and being implemented across all carriers of phones, is maybe 10 or 15 years.

For example, text messaging was built around standards like SMS and MMS. But most of the other mediums, they also move very slowly. One view you could have is that it's just been under-invested in, until maybe Spotify. That we went straight from text to photos to video and that audio kind of should have been in there in the middle. The first thing I want to talk about is something you said to me when we talked a year ago, which was that we kind of skipped past audio in the story of technology. Subscribe to the show: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Overcast | Pocket Casts

Below are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can hear our full conversation on the latest episode of the Source Code podcast, or by clicking on the player above.

Spotify news and talk