It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?
> or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
You mean by clicking a link on his website?
How likely is it that google would block joe rogan's website from search results for joe rogan?
I feel like people keep dodging a central issue here - joe rogan is not an independent being silenced on the open web by centralized platforms - he effectively sold the show to one of the platforms. They decide what happens with it (specifics of the terms of their agreement notwithstanding).
this isn't the first controversial audio programming on the internet, but it is the first one that is effectively owned by one of the listening platforms that actually has the power to do something without wading into unfathomably complicated waters, if they want to. that they (until today?) seemed not to want to - or to pretend that their relationship to the show is the same as twitter's relationship to me - is what is keeping this in the news.
To be 100% clear - it's not obvious to me what anyone should do in this case; joe, spotify, etc. I have my own opinions about the cost / benefit on the content but I also know enough to expect that things are probably more complicated than the popular narrative I have access to.
What I do know for sure is that Joe would have more control of his show's destiny, not less, if he had decided to keep distributing in a way that did not give a single entity complete control over whether a given piece of content could be distributed at all.
> or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that
But why would nobody do that? How hard is it? Maybe it's too much trouble for something you don't care about, but for a content you enjoy, doing one copy-paste isn't very difficult?
Personally I resent Spotify for the whole move to podcasts.
There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Instead they choose to publish recordings of guys talking -- not experts in any subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant of everything, and who, because they don't know anything, tend to have a very political conversation. This isn't art. This is just another way of wasting time.
As a result, Spotify is now in the business of policing content. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
> There is still so much to do with music (streaming quality, music videos, lyrics, chords...)
Correct, but:
1. Everyone wants to be the Netflix of podcasts.
2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Caveat re 2.: I'm not sure how much advertising contributes to Spotify revenue, so take this one with a grain of salt. It used to be the next hot thing in adtech when I worked in the industry before 2021.
Remember: why charge the user directly, when you can charge them indirectly using a bunch of random middlemen (DAAST, VAST, potato, potahtoh)!
> Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Example of a slightly less stupid* game: The Apple Podcasts app. The UX is mediocre, but the ability to pay for series/bundles is something I'd like to see more. Just let me pay for the content.
As much as podcast content can be decoupled from the user agent, I'd like to see the same done with payments.
> 2. It's premium advertising real estate. The ad formats you can chuck into a podcast have higher CPM.
Not for long. I'm already starting to skip algorithmically inserted ads in podcasts because they're annoying claptrap like terrestrial radio ads. Adtech companies don't just come along and "use" ad space. They actively ruin its original value with their tactics.
I remember a few years ago that Spotify made a big deal about "not censoring explicit songs" and not even giving me the option, so if I had music playing randomly at some point it would blast out some curse-laden song while I'm driving with the kids.
I'm far more concerned with the terrible search function which puts all sorts of user created crap at the top that pretends to be what it's not, rather than album names.
Not sure if I agree that being exposed to explicit content sometimes as a child is on the same level of damage as constant vaccine misinformation/disinformation.
Does Spotify require you to listen to podcasts? Not sure why your angry that a streaming company would expand into another genre without getting your stamp of approval for what the podcasts discuss and the qualifications of the podcasters. Seems like a perfectly reasonable business move to target curious listeners.
By the way, based on your standards main stream news and most media content should be discouraged. The vast majority of it is “guys talking -- not experts in the [any] subject, but random guys who are pretty ignorant.”
You're right, I don't care much for mainstream news either, especially pundits who are just noise making machines with zero added value.
But yes, as a user and subscriber, Spotify's business decisions matter to me. Because of their decision to host podcasts, which are low-content content and have nothing to do with music, I can't listen to artists who choose to dissociate themselves with that.
So, why aren’t people more upset about mainstream news putting out blathering nonsense in 2-3 minute sound bytes about the same topics almost verbatim. Instead, there is an uproar over a podcaster that releases long interviews of people across many subjects (including controversial ones). We should be encouraging more discourse like we see on Rogan’s podcast, not berating it, especially if you prefer deeper discussion without fear of backlash by “squeaky wheel” personalities like Neil Young. Keep on rocking in the free world!
I don't have a problem with Joe Rogan. I never listened to any of his podcasts. He can say what he wants any way he wants. I don't care.
I have a problem with a service that I thought was all about music, hosting talk shows -- and talk shows that are US-centric, and controversial -- because as a consequence, said service becomes involved in a myriad of controversies and serves less music.
Of course I don't control what Spotify does; I will simply need to take my business elsewhere. It's not the end of the world; but it's annoying.
Understood. Yours is a consumer choice, not a political one. I have no problem with more content, but I do have a problem with algorithms and apps pushing content to me that ignores my preferences and/or ability to customize my searches for new content. This is an implementation detail though, not an issue with content I may dislike or not agree with.
I'm mad at Spotify because their recommendations used to be great.
Now the home page is a bunch of podcasts they're trying to get me to listen to. Even though I've never listened to a single podcast through them.
It's really annoying that recommendations, which are the primary reason I use Spotify, have gotten worse, and the UI has gotten worse, and I now have to scroll past podcasts just to get to music. I cancelled my account because of it.
> Spotify is NOT the open web. Rogan can host the audio files on his own site. That’s the open web.
I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach. Or he can keep his reach, by staying on the big (closed web) platforms, and be at these corporations' mercy. Users have been trained: they want to watch videos, they open youtube.com, maybe TikTok, and start clicking and scrolling. Most people won't expand the effort to keep up with you if you're not on the big (closed web) platforms, who have effectively taken over the web and discoverability of content.
It's like Cloudflare's free speech argument: if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations. From their corporate blog[0]:
> Increasing Dependence On A Few Giant Networks
> In a not-so-distant future, if we're not there already, it may be that if you're going to put content on the Internet you'll need to use a company with a giant network like Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Alibaba [to prevent being taken down].
> For context, Cloudflare currently handles around 10% of Internet requests.
> Without a clear framework as a guide for content regulation, a small number of companies will largely determine what can and cannot be online.
"if you're big and controversial, you essentially need DDoS protection, meaning you're dependent on the goodwill of a few big corporations."
How is this any different than in the analogue world? If you want to rage against "the system" in a local bar or in your living room with a few of your friends, nobody is going to bother you. If you have a large following, you are likely to face counter-speech or even moral suasion by others who don't like what they are hearing.
So, basically rather than the old culture of free speech, what we have now is:
You're free to speak, but as speech is centralized on private platforms, they get to make sure that nobody will ever hear you. This is good (tm).
And the American left, the ones who used to fight for free speech are perfectly fine with this, so long as they own the platforms. After all, the boot of authoritarianism is fine when you're the one wearing it.
First, speech is not wholly "centralized" on private platforms. The purpose of platforms is to provide a centralized service for content, but platforms don't have the power to eliminate alternate forums for speech. There aren't Spotify brownshirts burning down indie music labels and shaking down local bands that don't sign up, or showing up at random doors to bother individuals who refuse to tune in.
Second, the idea that platforms are reacting to public opinion precisely goes against the idea of authoritarianism.
If we're going down this path -- why don't we talk about talk radio in the US, which is essentially a precusor to Joe Rogan style content and is dominated by right-wing shock jocks. Does the absolute dominance of the right wing on talk radio and the absence of left-wing content mean that there is no free speech? Or I guess to take it to the level of your dystopian fantasy, should we live in a world where cars are programmed to require the listener to listen to talk radio and prevent anyone in cars from turning off the dial?
>First, speech is not wholly "centralized" on private platforms. The purpose of platforms is to provide a centralized service for content, but platforms don't have the power to eliminate alternate forums for speech. There aren't Spotify brownshirts burning down indie music labels and shaking down local bands that don't sign up, or showing up at random doors to bother individuals who refuse to tune in.
Oh no, 99% of communication is on private platforms, surely this mean that topical discourse is extremely free as you can always scream into the void.
Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard as otherwise you'd have freedom of speech in almost every dystopian setting, provided nobody else hears you.
The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications. As such, the ability to censor across these platforms is vastly more powerful than any private censorship due to it's lack of constraints.
>Talk radio
Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market. However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Even better, your horrendous strawman of the cars which force said show upon listener neglects the fact that the Spotify user, if he wishes not to listen to Joe Rogan can... just not hit the play button?
> Pardon my sarcasm, but Freedom of Speech is fundamentally tied to the right to be (reasonably) heard
At least in small-l Enlightment liberalism, there is no such "right to be heard" except in the context that people have a right to petition and speak out against the government. You can't compel an audience -- this is why there is a corrolary freedom of association.
I agree with you that what tends to foster healthy social relations and civil society is where there are social norms that encourage debate and opportunities for people from different backgrounds and experiences to interact.
There's a lot of scholarship on that topic and where those spaces exist there are freedoms associated with them, but I think it would be extreme to say that people have a right to an audience.
>The reality of the situations is that these private platforms are the public squares of today, and like it or not, they represent the vast majority of communications.
Internet platforms are a cheap imitation of the town square and I don't see why we should effectively compel speech in order to maintain something like this. Even talk radio is closer to the public square in that much of the programming is live and they take (curated) calls from the listening audience.
The Internet has failed as a viable alternative for the public sphere for a number of predictable reasons. If your argument is that we should have a public square where ideas are openly contested, it's far easier to do that when the decisions are made locally in a manner that's closer to the public.
>Are there significant barriers to a left wing talk radio show? From what I understand, the issue isn't in institutional barriers, but instead a lack of a market.
Talk radio used to be closer to a public square but due to consolidation of local stations under basically a couple of owners starting in the 1980's, right wing shock jocks dominate the schedule. So, to the extent that there isn't a "market," it's for the reason you complain about regarding tech platforms and the result has been the absolute opposite of your complaint -- right wing speech is constantly present there. And frankly, take a look at tech platforms and you'll see that there are huge volumes of right wing content.
>However, we've very much seen the inverse for right-wing platform, with anything from payment processors to cloudflare and other core infrastructural components locking them out.
Those platforms are the opposite of a public square where ideology is contested rather than explicitly defined.
To directly address your point -- a lot of those were shut down for reasons beyond their politics. You can find any number of expressly right wing forums and websites on the Internet. As I've pointed out, talk radio has far more reach and impact than some of these tech platforms for better or worse.
I think you misunderstand what I mean when I say: "the open web is dead". Its reach is dead.
Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens. Users were trained to get information that way. Now that traffic's been captured by the walled gardens that optimize for engagement. There's a reason Google Reader died, Google stated it: "declining use and relevance".
Going viral is essential to growing an audience. TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter offer that. The open web doesn't.
> Previously, the "open web" was all there was, before the online walled gardens.
This is revisionist bullshit. Before Facebook et al AOL was the major walled garden. After AOL's star began to fade they and everyone else focused on becoming "homepages" with integrated search. They even provided helpful search toolbars! Social media is just the latest walled garden on the web.
Don't pretend the majority of web users have ever been bravely exploring the corners of every dark nook of the web. The majority has always been on some curated site with little deviation.
My comment is just as germane to your clarification of your position. If you were to say that the open web has been overshadowed or marginalized, I would concur.
No, growing an audience of millions of people might necessitate going viral. Plenty of people are happy to have a very small, but tight knit community in their own little corner of the open web.
> My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
But he already had massive reach, that’s why Spotify paid $100 million. If his fans can be relied upon to sign up for Spotify and enter their credit card details you can bet they can be relied upon to click a link on a web page.
I know it’s a weak analogy but look at something like Wordle. It’s not on Steam, or in the App Store. It’s just a web page and it spread like wildfire despite what users are supposedly “trained” to do. We’re not giving people enough credit.
> My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
And? If a company spends money building a platform, including infrastructure, they can host whatever they want on it. They also don't need to host what they don't want. It doesn't matter if it's a hosting service or search engine or just a simple directory of links. No one owes anyone else their audience.
You're complaining that people might need to do work to get an audience.
> I know. My point is that he can do that, and he'd lose most of his reach.
Maybe if he was starting out. At this point his audience would follow him. That's not to mention that while he was a "traditional" podcast anyone could just add his RSS feed and listen. Indeed many of his listeners did just that before the Spotify deal. We're not yet at the point where client software is filtering content for us.
Right? I mean, good lord the amount of blabbering that end runs the obvious is annoying. Setup your own. Move on.
Maybe Joe's bigger problem is he talks too much. He ought to spend time thinking about his business not seeing himself as a celebrity. You know, in a lot of places, stupidity is not well tolerated.
And Joe? Maybe think about something to say. Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr (boxer eg Ali), MLK, Federal papers, Shakespeare, Voltaire are remembered. In the daily spoken world, you'll accumulate many data points. Eventually turn to analysis, reflection, meaning.
Cause if you don't? I can still go back to the good guys above or merely talk to your guests myself. And we'll move on.
That's like saying you should divorce after the first fight or argument. A contract has been signed for a lot of money, 2 years a business relationship has been working fine for both parties and then the shit storm happens. You think all the talk right now is because he sees himself as a celebrity? Or because it makes no rational sense to just completely end his ties with spotify or for spotify to end their ties with him at the first signs of pressure from the social justice machine?
The net is open if you have know-how beyond booking guest talent oneself or through a 3rd party e.g. booking agent if you understand something about the tech that gets your product out. That was the position I agreed with. Why? 'cause it's right.
The net is open but there's a question of how easy or even if it is possible to gain an audience comparable to what the "closed" web offers. If you don't gain popularity then it is not as easy to get high value guests in the first place because those too may seek a big audience or give more value to venues that offer it so I'm not sure I get what your point is after all.
Dude! Time to grow up. Unidimensional people are boring. You wanna know what? If all Joe can do is yack in the microphone ... Maybe the fact some of his post casts went missing is much Ado about nothing. Wanna also know what? MLK or Ali would figure out how. Maybe Joe or you or both are unmotivated
First you get a company create a large platform that makes it very difficult to for individual people to thrive in the space around it.
Then the large company starts deciding what can or cannot be published, effectively making it impossible for some people to even be present in that space.
Now, imagine the same happens for every possible space you could use to contact other people. Videos, podcasts, have a web page searchable on search engines, tweet, instant messaging, and so on and on. You are effectively excluded because your views do not match mainstream or touch controversial or taboo subjects.
I may not agree with Rogan or other people that are being excluded but that does not necessarily give me right to decide whether they shouldn't be heard by other people.
I strongly believe this is where judicial system is supposed to represent us to follow laws to judge which instances of speech are and which are not lawful.
What we have now is effectively mob rule.
Imagine some people win and decide that talking about racism should quieted down. Is it that hard to imagine?
Bait and Switch is the general business model of everything. Do you think next year DoorDash will be as cheap as it was when it first launched? As soon as companies get a decent market share, they start increasing prices. It is silly to complain about bait and switch for hosting content but not about prices.
It would be bait and switch if they changed their terms unilaterally. In this case, they always had the right to remove content from their platform whenever they consider it harmful to their platform.
Win popular approval. In the past it has been shown the popular view to not be the best, what makes you so sure the current trend is perfect and deserves no opposition?
Say you are leader of your tribe and you get bit by a dog. Then you decide all dogs should be removed from your village because dogs caused harm to you.
That's what the current social justice machine looks like to me and I don't think they are right.
I don't know honestly. The details matter.. I wouldn't agree to teach children about the infinite genders one could identify as or promote transitioning to people under 18. But have no problems teaching about standard gay acceptance.
I'm not saying the far right are good either but right now you can't say they have as much an impact on the culture as the far left.
Agreed. That said, no one is an island. A hosting provider, ISP, CDN, even DNS can all decide to make you disappear from the web. Of course, it's a much higher bar than relying on Facebook, Twitter, or Spotify.
What's funny is that Joe Rogan was an active participant on the 'open web'. He had his own a website with a blog and discussion forums, and the podcast started as vlog entries in a text blog.
"Growth" and scale are interesting concerns. Companies, cities, languages, etc that aren't "growing" are considered to be in crisis. You could have a little gig that produces and sells 100 gadgets a month. At $100 per, it's enough to quit your day job. In fact, you're considering hiring some help. Two years later, you're still selling 100 per month and can't figure out what's the problem. Maybe you need to shut it all down.
A podcast with 10,000 listeners? Wow! Who'd have ever thought our little Joey would attract so much interest? Two years later, Joseph Productions is struggling to keep the doors open with only 500,000 listeners.
Back in the day, people found a website by word of mouth and bookmarked it. 100 page views a week was awesome. 1000 a month was maybe even better than all that money spent stuffing mailboxes with flyers. This internet thing has a lot of potential.
Today? If you can't break into the front page of a Google search, what's the point?
An automaker that sells $1 billion of product is in deep trouble because growth is flat. A city that hosts 2 million convention visitors a year is "struggling" and needs a new Chief of Tourism. A town with a population of 10,000 with clean streets and no crime is at a dead end because they don't have a Walmart and can't attract new businesses.
>Money killed (or is in the process of killing) podcasting.
I see a whole lot of podcasts out there. They're mostly either something that someone does on the side either for fun or as part of their jobs or they're ad supported. (Honestly, I'm often a bit surprised that modest advertising supports obviously sizable staffs--even if I'm sure no one is getting rich.)
You’re not wrong. For me, the ads read by the podcasters themselves killed it for me. I really find the idea of “monetizing” every last thing extremely distasteful.
Unfortunately, this is the case. As someone who graduated uni in 1995, I pine (lol) for the days where the internet was largely Usenet, IRC, and email listservs followed by the early days of the web. Social media and especially social media apps on mobile devices completely ruined it.
That can’t possibly be. His audience, like so many other niche groups that gather around conspiracy theories, sure must be the smartest people. They are on to something we, sheeple, haven’t seen yet.
It's also possible to streamline adding the RSS feed by using custom url schemes (at least on iOS). A url like podcast://example.rss will open in Apple Podcasts and other podcast apps offer their own url schemes. This can make it as simple as clicking on a link to subscribe to private feeds.
I still do it to this day. I love being able to go between apps/devices/OSes and subscribe and unsubscribe to any feed at will. Discovery is a bit different, relying on recommendations from friends or referrals from creators I follow. I highly recommended it!
You see quite a bit of mutual backscratching on podcasts as well with some podcasts running guest episodes from other podcasts and so forth. I'm subscribed to far more podcasts than I regularly listen to. Honestly, I don't see discovery as a particular problem. (Standing out from so much material out there can be challenging--but that's got nothing to do with centralized vs. decentralized.)
A tiny sliver of people, relative to the podcast audience size of today, did that. The people who would still do it now is still a tiny sliver of the potential audience.
Heck I do it, but I do it for very few podcasts that I already know I like, mainly because discovery is so awkward.
> adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
This is easy, they just have to put a widget tile the pod love subscribe button on their site, which makes it relatively easy for the user (if they know which podcast app they are using)
Monolithic platforms are dead. More and more creators will take lesson and put their content under their own brand. Youtbe will be just "dump host" embedded from other domain!
How is the open web dead? Are you saying that private companies acting in their benefit hurts the open web? You can still create any website or any content you desire who anyone can access. The open web didn’t provide reach by default. That is why directories sprang up followed by search engines. If anything the open web was easier to navigate 25 years ago and heavily reliant on word of mouth.
> It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify.
I'm not so sure. Just put the non controversial episodes on YouTube, then link and advertise the "problematic" episodes that are only available on your own platform.
It's worse under the authoritative government where I live. Multiple people including doctors were arrested by police and beaten up in custody for saying online of the dangers of covid in early 2020. And then then in late 2020 these same government organizations were beating people up again for saying online that it wasn't.
Sorry I agree with the overall sentiment that party line can shift with time unpredictably, but who had been banned in early 2020 for supporting masks? As I recall people socially self imposed masks in a matter of just a couple weeks early in the pandemic, in North America at least, and nobody would have been banned for it.
This issue needs thorough investigative work, to reconstruct an objective timeline.
But as far as I remember it, mask wearing was seen first as being something for paranoid conspiracy theorists, then selfish people, then the narrative was reversed.
Experts were invited on primetime TV to say masks are not recommended to the general public.
I distinctly remember arguing with educated people at work, online, with relatives, that masks should be worn in enclosed public places, months deep into the pandemic.
We would see old people, barely managing to walk, not wear masks while going grocery shopping, because government experts told them they didn't need to. All the while China was in total lockdown and victim counts exploding.
I fear most people would prefer to forget because they played a part in it and it makes them feel dumb. We might get collective amnesia, ensuring this part of the story never reaches the history books. We shouldn't be ashamed though, we've all been victims of misinformation and cultish behavior at one point, the important thing is to draw lessons from it.
I remember early on in December 2020? when the first rumblings of some odd disease in wuhan emerged, largely in oddball enclaves like 4chan and some subreddits.
In the right wing circles I was familiar with, they did talk about this, and were basically labelled conspiracy theorists or trolls. Then, if you remember, anti-Asian racists for associating it with China.
Masks were also ridiculed early in the pandemic, where authoritative recommendations were explicitly NOT to wear the mask [1]. Funnily enough, the response in said right-aligned communities was to wear masks. This flipped to opposition once govt recommendation flipped and mandates were implemented.
Oh, very cool, thanks for the link. There is something about human memory, since official stance has been on the side of mask mandate for so long, that makes it harder to remember how it was ever different before. Your link is very helpful
In early 2020, NYC transit operators were barred from wearing masks and the MTA reasoned that there was not federal or state policy at the time recommending mask usage.
At the time, the surgeon general cautioned the general public to stop buying masks because, "they had not been proven effective in preventing the spread of coronavirus."
Exactly. People here vastly overestimate how technical and motivated the average user is.
Trump's banned on practically all platforms. How many of his fans added his RSS to their app? (Wait, they don't use RSS apps). His only platform is now his website, where he publishes blog posts.
Did his fans follow him to the "open web"? Nope.
> Trump’s Website Traffic Dove a Yuge 99% Year Over Year
> DonaldJTrump.com went from 14 million unique visitors in April 2020 to just 161,000 in April 2021
His blog posts are reposted on multiple other platforms. If you can already see all of those posts on your favorite platform, what incentive do you have to visit the actual website?
It's likely Rogan would have been banned from YouTube and Apple Podcasts had he not moved to Spotify. He could have moved to tiny platforms like Odysee or Rokfin that would likely have poor retention rates, or just relied on people adding his URL manually to Apple Podcasts, but come on. Nobody would do that.
The "death of the open web" problem isn't creators somehow consistently choosing to empower companies that keep hurting them. Users are doing that, and creators follow.
Imagine Tim Ferriss gets banned from all "non-open web" platforms today: podcast app indexes, Google Search, Twitter, Facebook, Spotify. We'll imagine he gets banned for zero reason: did nothing wrong, did nothing different, isn't any intrinsically less relevant or popular than he was yesterday. What's left is his website (if you remember the URL), and newsletter if you're already subscribed. You can add his podcast URL to your podcast app, but his podcast doesn't appear in Search. How much of his reach does he lose, overnight? 50%? 75%?
Google Search isn't the "open web", and if they don't list you, you don't exist. How can one creator fix that?