Isn’t the entire idea of the podcast index that they aren’t relying on a single platform for their source of truth? Podcasts are decentralized by design so in theory all links to podcasts should be scrape-able in some way (just as Google scrapes websites). One of the sites the podcast index should scrape is Apple, but it should by no means be limited to a single platform.

I use podcast index exclusively for podcast search and I've never been unable to find a podcast I was looking for there (just my experience in having used it for years)

I recently also wanted to play around with some itunes podcast data. But it seemed Apple removed the scrapable catalogue index of their podcast library. How did you build up your database, if i may ask?

There are a lot of dead podcasts in general. It's tough to sustain a podcast and many people give up after doing a handful of episodes.

Probably to discourage spam

Anecdotal, but I know the guys behind this. They're about as much free speech absolutists as you'll find. They're not going to remove anything unless it presents a large legal problem for them not to.

The idea of the index is to prevent censorship

The better word is "content policy"

Well, I'm guessing I have two podcasts in there, one of which is completely inactive and the other of which I haven't published anything new to for well over a year. There are a lot of podcasts out there that are pretty inactive and some were only intended as being limited series in the first place. So, yeah, if the universe of discoverable podcasts is 4 million it wouldn't surprise me at all if an order of magnitude fewer are creating new content. (Though older content, e.g. for The Big Dig limited series can still be historically noteworthy.)

I'm not sure how you solve discoverability other than personal recommendation from someone with similar interests. As noted, there are a ton of podcasts out there and many won't overlap with your interests, others are largely or wholly inactive, others are poorly produced, etc. The fix, such as it is, is probably to have a podcast reviewer who isn't in it for payola, who overlaps with your interests and sensibilities who makes recommendations on a blog.

V4V is a concept and not a technology.

It's simply that the podcaster provides something valuable to you with their podcast and you're expected to return an equal amount of value back to them in whatever form you choose. It could be a Paypal payment, cool artwork for the show, topic research for the show, or whatever value you can contribute back.

Check out value4value.info for a more detailed explanation

The idea of the index is it acts as an API for apps to build search and other things on. It can do some searches but ya know what I mean.

Also no search by episode titles.

To discover new podcasts, I often search on https://www.listennotes.com/ for episodes about people or topics I find interesting.

I mainly listen to audio dramas. I find reddit the best place to get recs either that or I give advertised podcasts in ones I'm listening to a try.

I've been trying to get back into listening to podcasts over the past few years and something I've found is that the means of delivery is split. You can't rely on being available to subscribe to 'textbook definition' RSS based podcasts, it could also be on apple, spotify, youtube, an embedded player on their website, or any combination of those.

For me the best way was always personal recommendations from friends, sometimes also if a host of one show was a guest on another one.

I tried to build a better way to see what my friends are listening to with https://lastcast.fm, but I've since shut down the project.

Overcast is popular, but I would say its UI has also become worse over time:

https://overcast.fm/

But its less about discovery than tracking your library and playing them back.