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The audacity of Apple Podcasts

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Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#71

Post by mikece »

djl0 wrote: post #10
mikece wrote: post #3

"Under the hood, Apple stopped having each device request a copy of RSS feeds." Yes, because this was creating DDoS levels of traffic to podcast hosting providers. Now Apple simply pings madly away at all known podcast RSS feeds and updates clients when there is a new episode. What would be far greener -- and efficient! -- would be for them to get on board with PodPing[1] to not only deliver feed updates much faster…

I'm interested to see this podping service, however given the whole model of RSS is that the end-user is requesting feed updates (I would guess daily on average, but maybe hourly?), I have a hard time thinking this was a problem for podcast providers. I have no knowledge of the implementation at scale, but given the feed is static for the most part, wouldn't podcast hosting providers want their users constantly check…

Depends on the podcast and the users. If I know my favorite afternoon commute podcast drops at 4:30 PM local and I don't see it by 4:45 PM, I'm going to be doing the pull-to-refresh thing frequently, hoping it's available to download before I leave the WiFi at work for my drive home. I suppose Podping plus push notification to all app installs subscribed to the podcast that just updated would be another way to do it.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#73

Post by tootie »

bastawhiz wrote: post #30
crazygringo wrote: post #15

> You could sign up to allow Apple to host your show and its audio (for a cool $20/year). In exchange, you could charge a subscription fee to your listeners... If you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app... The audio will be protected with DRM. The author presents this as "audacity" and bad... but doesn't it make perfect sense? If you're charging a subscript…

Author here. > If you're charging a subscription fee The DRM applies even if you charge no fee. > why would you expect Apple to make it available to competing podcast apps Because every single other podcast hosting service does, with the exception of folks that signed a contract with Spotify. > If you post something on TikTok it doesn't show up on people's Facebook feeds. It can, actually. You can post a link. If I u…

Apple announced they would allow passthrough hosting for premium feeds a few weeks ago. Right now it's only open to handful of big hosting partners, but will probably open up more in the near future. This was likely more about laziness and/or rushing to market that it was a genuine ploy. Apple is still the bulk of our listening (60ish%) and we still get all the first-party download metrics from our hosting service. Premium feeds are rehosted by Apple and it's huge PITA because we have ad-supported public feeds and ad-free premium feeds and need to build them twice. That will hopefully be fixed soon.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#74

Post by praisewhitey »

>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.

I'd guess the opposite, it's the mindset of a company that feels they lost dominance over the podcasting world and are trying to hold on what's left.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#76

Post by lazzlazzlazz »

crazygringo wrote: post #15

> You could sign up to allow Apple to host your show and its audio (for a cool $20/year). In exchange, you could charge a subscription fee to your listeners... If you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app... The audio will be protected with DRM. The author presents this as "audacity" and bad... but doesn't it make perfect sense? If you're charging a subscript…

> why would you expect Apple to make it available to competing podcast apps?

Because you don't want your audience to be captured by Apple, who can extract rents based on their artificially mediating the relationship with them (through their app and network of podcasts)?

This is like asking "why should you expect a superior business relationship?". Corporate network Stockholm syndrome.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#77

Post by jjcon »

chrisoverzero wrote: post #6
jjcon wrote: post #4

The best part is how Apple Podcasts had a 1.x star rating in the App Store so they gamed the system in a way that would get any other app kicked off - they prompted people for reviews making them think they were rating specific podcasts and not the app https://www.theverge.com/2021/11/19/22791968/apple-podcasts-...

> We weren’t able to track down a copy of the prompt ourselves to confirm when and where it appears or what it looks like — which seems important if people are getting confused […] This is speculation presented as news. The confusion certainly appears to be real, but there's no actual investigative reporting .

It’s not speculation just because they don’t have a photo of the prompt (of which I’ve received personally) - the story is in plain sight in the ratings themselves, go have a look.

Here’s another article from an apple friendly source

https://www.macrumors.com/2021/11/19/podcasts-rating-prompt-...

EDIT: Actually - found a screenshot mid-podcast: https://i.imgur.com/dnqcAbQ.jpeg

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#78

Post by filoleg »

bastawhiz wrote: post #30
crazygringo wrote: post #15

> You could sign up to allow Apple to host your show and its audio (for a cool $20/year). In exchange, you could charge a subscription fee to your listeners... If you host your show with Apple, the only listeners you can have are folks with the Apple Podcasts app... The audio will be protected with DRM. The author presents this as "audacity" and bad... but doesn't it make perfect sense? If you're charging a subscript…

Author here. > If you're charging a subscription fee The DRM applies even if you charge no fee. > why would you expect Apple to make it available to competing podcast apps Because every single other podcast hosting service does, with the exception of folks that signed a contract with Spotify. > If you post something on TikTok it doesn't show up on people's Facebook feeds. It can, actually. You can post a link. If I u…

> If I upload a podcast to Apple, it's physically inaccessible unless you have a Mac or an iOS device.

Unless I am misunderstanding your claim, this is not true.

You can listen to Apple Podcasts using iTunes for Windows. You can also listen to them on Android. But dealing with it on Android is indeed annoying, because it requires downloading podcasts in itunes on your desktop, and then manually transferring them to your Android phone after finding the locally stored files.

However, it is easy to sidestep all of that if the podcast creator just uploads to multiple podcast hosting platforms.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#79

Post by pwinnski »

This is bad behavior, antithetical to the spirit of podcasting. Offering DRM for paid subscriptions, or as an option, is one thing, but requiring it whether the podcast host wishes it or not is not defensible.

Re: The audacity of Apple Podcasts

#80

Post by SllX »

janalsncm wrote: post #70
SllX wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re paying money, signing an agreement and uploading files, Apple isn’t tricking you: you’re not doing your due diligence OR you just don’t care if anyone outside the Podcasts app can listen (there are podcasters who for reasons—good or not—assume their reach is only about as far as iTunes/Apple Podcasts). This is crap, but it’s not because the deal Apple is offering to podcasters is crap: $20/year hosting and…

I can’t agree that signing an agreement means Apple gets to behave however they want within the confines of the law. A contract should not be something that one hides behind, but something that someone holds up as enshrining a shared, common sense understanding of an agreement. The fact that an Apple Podcasts user tried to do something that is 1) not unreasonable given other podcasting platforms and 2) not clearly un…

If you’re a hobbyist, you might go “oh no, this won’t work out, Overcast users can’t see my podcast” and switch hosting providers.

If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really that simple. This service costs this much and has these limitations, that service costs more but doesn’t have those limitations.

So yeah, when you sign a service agreement, expect only exactly what the service offers in the agreement, and if the terms are not satisfactory, go sign with someone else. What is the issue? If I can’t find someone’s podcast in Overcast, I’m simply never going to consider even listening to it. Conversely, some podcasters are actually okay with that and would prefer to pay for cheaper hosting. That’s a valid choice for them to make too, but they are making a choice whether they pay attention to it or not.

Also: just a note, this is only a hosting issue. You can still list your podcast in the iTunes Podcast Directory (or whatever it’s called now) without hosting on Apple’s servers.

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