Current Challenges and Future Directions in Podcast Information Access

Abstract

Podcasts are spoken documents across a wide-range of genres and styles, with skyrocketing listenership across the world, and a rapidly lowering barrier to entry for both listeners and creators. The great strides which have been made in search and recommendation in research and industry have yet to see impact in the podcast space, where recommendations are still largely driven by word of mouth. In this perspective paper, we highlight the many differences between podcasts and other media which are readily accessed via search and recommendation, and discuss our perspective on challenges and future research directions in the domain of podcast information access.