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Apple Podcasts Subscriptions is launched
Apple

Apple Podcasts Subscriptions is launched

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Apple

What you need to know about the Apple announcements

The details of the subscription

  • Apple
    Apple Podcasts

    Apple Podcasts will take a 30% commission of the subscription price for a subscriber’s first year, dropping to 15% for additional years. As a podcaster, if you want to list Freemium or Paid podcasts, there’s also a US $19.99/year fee (there’s a $99/year fee to sell apps with Apple already).

  • There is no exclusivity clause: so you can make your show available for subscription on other platforms as well, if you choose to, and assuming they don’t have exclusivity themselves. See Luminary’s announcement for an example of a company doing just that.

  • Want to offer a free trial? Sure, you can do that (there are a set of durations offered by Apple).

  • Apple
    Apple Podcasts

    Paid podcasts are hosted by Apple, not by your podcast host. “Subscriber audio is only accessible on Apple Podcasts and is protected by Digital Rights Management”. You’ll be uploading uncompressed WAV or FLAC files; Apple will do the audio compression, and will also handle analytics.

  • Apple
    Apple Podcasts

    They’ve made no announcement about Apple Podcasts going onto additional platforms; however, clause 2.3 of the Apple Podcasts Program Agreement discusses rights for Apple Podcasts “on any platform”, and specifically mentions Windows and Android.

  • They’ve made no announcements about transcripts, either, but clause 2.2 (c) lets them make transcripts, and lets you opt out.

  • Apple
    Apple Podcasts

    Podcasters can set pricing, and availability, by country. Apple Podcasts is available in 170 territories.

  • Apple
    Apple Podcasts

    Unlike Patreon, Supporting Cast or similar models, Apple Podcasts will not give you access to any personal data about your paid subscribers, like their emails or names.

Additionally

  • Apple

    Some have suggested that this screenshot on Apple’s site shows you can set up “hosts and guests” for your show; something previously not changeable without being specially chosen. However, the hosts and guests feature isn’t showing for our incredibly successful podcast about time, PodClock; or for Podnews which does have hosts and guests enabled.

  • The iTunes API will continue to be supported. (“Supported”, the pedant would note, is not the same as “unchanged” - see below why many podcasts are appearing in their API without the RSS feed URL).

  • None of these changes were communicated ahead of time to any podcast host we’ve spoken to.

  • Apple

    Apple’s marketing guidelines still tell us to use “Subscribe”, not “Follow”.

  • What should you do next? You don’t need to do anything. And - read on - you probably don’t want to.

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A new feature - and a serious bug??

  • The adventurous might want to log into (the new) Apple Podcasts Connect and “set up your account”. However, this took eight hours for us to activate our account (and crashed the first time with an error message).
  • A new feature in the new Apple Podcasts Connect is this checkbox that allows podcasts to opt into being in Apple’s API. It’s checked by default - and says “this control exposes your RSS feed URL to our API, making your show discoverable for a larger audience”.
  • However, existing shows appear to all be opted out of the API. Any editing of your show, even if you don’t edit the RSS feed, appears to opt out of the API. You don’t want that.
  • More than that, editing your show currently appears to… well, delete your entire show from Apple Podcasts. At least, our published show listing isn’t working right now. At all.
  • Others on Twitter are also reporting their podcasts have disappeared, too.
Apple
Apple Podcasts

UPDATE: After a few hours, and after we contacted Apple Podcasts support, it mysteriously came back again. Which is good, but a bit concerning.

Who’s in for subscriptions?

  • Apple
    Apple Podcasts

    Luminary is adding their shows to Apple Podcasts Subscriptions. All 35 original podcasts will be available in the Apple Podcasts Luminary channel, and continue in Luminary’s own app. Pricing is $5.99/month on both Luminary’s app and on Apple Podcasts; though there’s a cheaper annual option in the Luminary app.

  • Apple
    NPR
    Spotify

    NPR will be a launch partner on Apple and Spotify’s paid podcast subscription platforms, according to a staff email obtained by Podnews. The NPR Board has also approved development of NPR’s own sponsorship-free public radio podcast subscription service, which member stations will also have access to. However, sponsor-supported shows will still be free: “NPR remains committed to making news and other content available to the public free of charge as part of its public service mission,” Podnews is told.

  • A set of other publishers have announced, including…

Opinions

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