Breaker Adds Support for JSON Feed

Erik Michaels-Ober:

The decentralized structure of podcasts creates a chicken-and-egg problem for JSON Feed to gain adoption. There’s no incentive for podcasters to publish in JSON Feed as long as podcast players don’t support it. And there’s no incentive for podcast players to support JSON Feed as long as podcasters don’t publish in that format.

Breaker is hoping to break that stalemate by adding support for JSON Feed in our latest release. As far as we know, Breaker is the first podcast player to do so. Unlike other features that differentiate Breaker, we encourage our competitors to follow our lead in this area. The sooner all podcast players support JSON Feed, the better positioned the entire podcast ecosystem will be for the decades to come.

Three years ago I wrote that podcast players had replaced Twitter clients as the leading UI playground — the space where there’s a lot of competition and new ideas being tried out. I still think that’s true. Overcast and Castro keep getting better, and Breaker is a new and interesting take. The big difference with Breaker is that they have a social networking model, where you can follow your fellow Breaker-using friends and get podcast recommendations based on what they’re listening to.

★ Monday, 29 May 2017