SPC = Standard Podcast _Callback_?

[johnspurlock-skymethod]

The main goal of this SPC standard is to be focused like a laser on making as easy as possible for apps to make podcast playback consumption metrics privately available to the podcaster, and the mechanism chosen reflects that:

• one new app-hosted API endpoint
• no net-new outgoing fetch requests needed by the app's backend for every podcast in their directory.

The data flow is one way: podcasters pull the metrics (or ignore), the app does not push them.

However: this channel, once established, is useful in a general way - it gives podcasters (and their hosting companies) the ability to make other private calls to the app, via other query parameters to the app's podcaster-specific endpoint.

I'd be fine with having SPC stand for Standard Podcast Callback (instead of Standard Podcast Consumption) if someone can provide some compelling use cases for other things podcasters might request/notify to apps, most of the use-cases I've heard go the other way (app to podcaster).

And, crucially, as long as it does not compromise the primary goal of the spec in any way, namely being as easy in terms of development effort as possible for the app.

The modifications to the SPC spec could be minimal, and look something like:

• Update "Standard Podcast Consumption" to "Standard Podcast Callback"
• Introduce a new standard query parameter t that indicates the type of the request. This would be optional, and default to metrics, the one specified in the current proposal
• Standardize request/response formats for any agreed-upon new request types (and their associated t constants)
• If no t parameter is present (default), update the standard response payload to include an array of optional request types the endpoint also supports, if any. i.e. "otherTypes": [ "other-type", "other-type-2" ] for service discovery

Again, I'd only want to introduce even this minimum level of additional complexity if there was a really good reason for it.

Could also do this in a year or two after we see some metrics implementations, as all of these changes are backward compatible