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NIP-54
======
Podcasts
--------
`draft` `optional`
This NIP defines how podcast episodes can be fetched from relays. It's intended to fit easily into existing podcast players.
## Rationale
RSS feeds are great, but they have some problems that are solved by moving feeds from RSS URLs to multiple Nostr events, one for each episode:
- they depend on a URL and that is hard for most people, so podcasters tend to use service providers that can
- charge money -- which isn't a bad thing per se but it turns out that with a Nostr-native podcast feed protocol it would be much simpler to host feeds and infinitely cheaper to host the media, so the ecosystem could be more decentralized
- seal them into their walled gardens (like Spotify has been doing), slowly turning a previously open ecosystem into a centralized system captured by big corporations
- censor podcasters and prevent them from migrating (on Nostr this wouldn't be a problem even if a relay banned someone as moving to other relays would be trivial as long as the podcaster held their key and podcast clients could easily discover the new relay URLs)
- they can only be loaded in full, with no pagination or filtering of any kind, which means that
- the sync process in normal RSS clients is slow and cumbersome (which also nudges people into using centralized solutions)
- this has also led to the creation of broken schemes like [Podping](https://podping.org/), which wouldn't be necessary in a Nostr-native podcast feed
- It's impossible to reference a single episode directly (since it only exists as a member in the full RSS list of episodes), this means there is no way to share a podcast episode with friends or on social media, so people tend to share links to centralized platforms or to YouTube videos of the same podcast content, which is an antipattern
- they cannot be interacted with in any way: listeners cannot "like" or comment or signal that they have listened to the episode, which is also another factor in the push towards centralized closed platforms: better analytics and insights and possibilities of engagement with the public
## Event definitions
### Podcast Profile
Podcasts have their own key and their own [NIP-01](01.md) `kind:0` profile, but with a tag `["type", "podcast"]` that can be used to signal that they have podcast episodes published.
### Podcast Episodes
Podcast episodes are `kind:54` with some tags:
```jsonc
{
"id": "55807e7d5cd90d0303d7dce7397f996fdbaed8697903f326c7cf8ad999b9de3d",
"pubkey": "79be667ef9dcbbac55a06295ce870b07029bfcdb2dce28d959f2815b16f81798",
"kind": 54,
"created_at": 1700682555,
"tags": [
["title", "<episode title>"],
["image", "<optional episode image>"],
["description", "<a brief description>"],
["audio", "https://.../", "<optional_media_type>"], // can be specified multiple times
["t", "<optional tag>"], // can be specified multiple times
["alt", "<optional NIP-31 short description for displaying in incompatible clients>"]
],
"content": "<markdown content (or what is supported in RSS feeds content nowadays?)>",
"sig": "...",
}
```
### Podcast Comments
These are normal text comments like `kind:1`, but specific for podcast episodes.
```jsonc
{
"id": "606f6c703f04c70806a5c2830e3853bd83c44985b1f282a070ba894add3724b0",
"pubkey": "b2c5d5bf69d14d35c25fa47d5c67896b13394136734065a371c5bf2c62f905d2",
"kind": 55,
"created_at": 1700682556,
"tags": [
["e", "55807e7d5cd90d0303d7dce7397f996fdbaed8697903f326c7cf8ad999b9de3d"],
],
"content": "<plain text content>",
"sig": "...",
}
```
(It's unclear if it's best to use this or a generic kind for commenting on stuff that isn't `kind:1`.)
### Reactions (likes), zaps and reposts
These work normally according to their own NIPs.
### To be added:
- "read" events, signaling that a user has listened to a given podcast, perhaps just use https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/933
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