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The audacity of Apple Podcasts

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Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#161

Post by KyeRussell »

mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #144
tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

Beyond hardware integrations between their own HW, their software/services are odd and don't interoperate with conventional things. I used iphoto or whatever it was called and it had proprietary storage which was a huge turn off for me. Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway. Their podcast app ha…

You including your Apple Pay gripe in that list is a misattributed laughable Americanism instead of the jab at Apple that you intend it to be.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#162

Post by KyeRussell »

sneak wrote: post #124
tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

To wit: you can't use the new hardware 2FA passkeys on iOS unless you opt in to iCloud and all of the surveillance that entails.

It doesn’t sound like you know what this new feature actually does.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#163

Post by tomxor »

m3kw9 wrote: post #157
tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

It ain’t 1s or 0s with vertical integration, right now and in the near future it works well and still not restrictive at all on most things. All I can say is that the quality and experience of using apple products has been worth it. You are free to hedge your bets by using both apple and google but that would be a bad experience

True, and it will never be 100% because society and governments have their own way of pushing back eventually. But as I said, the issue is in the broader strategy, a trend has been emerging for some time now. The cost benefit is subjective so people have different tolerances - but some, like me, exited a number of stops back when they saw the track ahead. I'm only here to suggest others might want to pop their head out the window and decide for themselves.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#164

Post by scarface74 »

tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

> Apple's end game is vertical integration, it's "lock-in" on steroids. When they own every product or service in the stack, they can tune one product (like podcasts) to serve the purposes of another, even when it appears to hurt a product and it's users individually, because it benefits Apple as a whole.

This is demonstrable not true. From the time that iTunes first introduced podcast support in iTunes back in 2004 until today, you host your RSS feed on your own site and iTunes indexes your RSS feed. But you still host your own audio that gets served off of your own site.

Not only that, Apple has had a public documented API that doesn’t need any keys that you can use to basically get any information from the index since 2006.

Third party podcast apps use the API.

If your podcast isn’t listed on iTunes, you can still subscribe to the RSS feed of the podcast directly if you know the url.

If you publish a URL on your website, by default it will open in the podcast app.

This is much different than the podcast in name only monstrosity that Spotify has

On the other hand, the Apple podcast app has always sucked and I use Overcast.

Yes you can pretty easily have paid podcasts outside of Apple .

To the first approximation, no one is dumb enough to use Apple’s paid podcast offering and uses a third party one or roll their own with dedicated urls because they realize the number of third party clients available and they have no relationship with the customer.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#165

Post by filoleg »

bastawhiz wrote: post #145
filoleg wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you happen to have another example? This one doesn't work for me, but for an entirely different reason - it says that this specific podcast isn't available in the US store at the moment. So I cannot even access the episode on any device at all.

Go ahead and try it now, it looks like I hadn't fully saved the test episode.

Looks like you are correct, yep.

I am curious about how this works. Did you have to set some specific toggle to make it available on Apple Podcasts for Apple devices only? Or is this the standard flow for making a podcast available on Podcasts app? How do the other podcasts on the frontpage that are available for downloading on other devices do it?

Tangentially related, I wonder why it says "Apple Podcasts Preview" at the top of the page. Could it be that the app is just in the preview stage and just started the rollout with Apple devices first, with the support for other devices coming later through a web version (i.e., similar to how it was with Apple Music on the initial launch)?

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#166

Post by ted_bunny »

KyeRussell wrote: post #161
mattbrewsbytes wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond hardware integrations between their own HW, their software/services are odd and don't interoperate with conventional things. I used iphoto or whatever it was called and it had proprietary storage which was a huge turn off for me. Its never clear if a point of sale terminal accepts Apple Pay and where to hold your device so I avoid using it since chances are I have to get out a card anyway. Their podcast app ha…

You including your Apple Pay gripe in that list is a misattributed laughable Americanism instead of the jab at Apple that you intend it to be.

Why's that?

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#167

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

> I get that Apple stuff is generally a nice experience and there is genuinely lots of cool technology, but people need to understand the future they are buying into with Apple.

Can't speak for all Apple users, but the way a lot of my friends talk about their phones - it is crystal clear they think they're better than you if you don't have an iPhone.

I imagine this subset of users would be glad that people without iPhones can't listen to podcasts.

I think they're aware of what they're buying into and like it.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#168

Post by bastawhiz »

filoleg wrote: post #165
bastawhiz wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go ahead and try it now, it looks like I hadn't fully saved the test episode.

Looks like you are correct, yep. I am curious about how this works. Did you have to set some specific toggle to make it available on Apple Podcasts for Apple devices only? Or is this the standard flow for making a podcast available on Podcasts app? How do the other podcasts on the frontpage that are available for downloading on other devices do it? Tangentially related, I wonder why it says "Apple Podcasts Preview" a…

When you click the option to add a podcast to Apple Podcasts in the Podcasts Connect portal, there's one option to use an RSS feed and one to host your show on Apple.

I believe "Apple Podcasts Preview" just means you're looking at the web view.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#169

Post by jrochkind1 »

arthurofbabylon wrote: post #5

Reading this, I get the impression that someone at Apple tried to do the market capture playbook tactics (churn prevention, competitor lockout, first-party-favoritism) in an open world (podcasts). Obviously it doesn’t work, while eroding the underlying ecosystem. The smart move by Apple is to keep podcasts open, keep being the de facto provider, don’t bother making money from it now, and use it as a foot-in-the-door…

> keep being the de facto provider,

They are already in the process of losing that.

> Spotify overtook Apple Podcasts as the biggest US podcast platform in 2021, when the Swedish company drew 28.3 million monthly US podcast listeners, about 200,000 more than its rival did.

— https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/spotify-apple-po...

Spotify, with it's own walled garden podcasts without RSS feeds, that can only be listened to with spotify app.

There is definitely something going on in podcasts, and it's bigger than Apple.

Maybe Apple could resist it by trying to keep podcasts open, like you suggest? Or maybe they'd just go down with the ship? Apple is clearly trying to beat Spotify at the walled garden game though, not try to figure out how to make money from openness. The walled garden game (and the analytics and ad placement you get from having more control of podcasts than just supplying RSS feeds to them) are way more profitable for the central platforms -- if not for the podcast producers, and who even cares about the podcast listeners?

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#170

Post by MBCook »

tomxor wrote: post #102

> That’s right: if you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app. This feels like an absolutely wild choice from a product perspective; it’s the mindset of a company who still thinks that they have dominance over the podcasting world. It’s ludicrous to assume that it’s a good thing for listeners to have to have specific hardware in order to listen to a podcast. I…

Apple has controlled the podcast industry through the iTunes podcast directory since day one.

They’ve been benevolent and haven’t cracked down on things. They let basically any podcast in for free. They let 3rd party clients use their directory for free.

They ARE the podcast industry. And they’ve been open.

I see this purely as a reaction to Spotify and Google and others trying to grab and control the industry with private “podcasts” that can only be listened to in their custom app.

They’re trying not to be shoved out. And they’re big enough to be able to hold it.

It would be great if 3rd party apps on iOS could access your podcast subscriptions.

But this is way better to me than standing by and letting Spotify or whoever destroy the industry.

(I subscribe to podcasts, but not through Apple since I can’t use my preferred app, Overcast).

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