Apple wants you (and it) to get paid for your premium podcasts »Nieman Journalism Lab

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Apple has finally made the long-awaited move to monetize the podcast, the environment it kind of invented, and it certainly brought it to a mass audience. (What do you think “bridge” means?)

The first podcasting boom in 2005 came when Apple added podcast support to iTunes, and the second boom, almost a decade later, came when it preinstalled its Podcasts on every iPhone. While that app leaves much to be desired, it was instantly the best way to listen to podcasts – a title it still holds on most accounts, though Spotify is breathing down its throat.

However, Apple largely avoided making money from the app – causing some podcasters to thank their benevolent gentleman and others to wonder if that meant Apple’s interest in space had waned.

At today’s “Spring Loaded” event, Apple announced that it wants to make money from podcasts in the same way it makes money from apps. Most will remain free, supported by ads sold by their creators. But some will cost money, and Apple will get a discount. Here is The Verge:

A monumental change comes in the Apple Podcasts business: the company launches subscriptions within the Apple Podcasts application. At today’s spring event, the company announced that people will be able to subscribe to in-app content for additional benefits, such as ad-free content and bonus content, as well as early access. It will be launched in 170 regions and countries next month.

Initial partners include Pushkin Industries, QCODE and NPR. It looks like content creators will have to pay Apple $ 19.99 a year to provide subscriptions, and Apple will take 30 percent of revenue for the first year and 15 percent for subsequent years.

That 30/15 is the same discount that Apple makes for in-app subscriptions. (With a paid subscription model, it probably became more urgent for Apple to change what it used to call a “subscription” to a podcast to “watch” a podcast. It’s inconvenient to use “subscription” to describe both paid and and the unpaid ones you make with a show.) It’s also very similar to how Apple manages the “Channels” on the Apple TV.

Perhaps most interestingly, Apple allows podcast publishers to create “channels” that bring together multiple shows under a single banner. For example, a news site might offer a daily news podcast, a weekly opinion show, and an interview show and group them into a single paid subscription. (I’m still not sure how well these channels will play with existing subscriptions outside of publishers’ podcasts. For example, if I’m a paying subscriber to the Washington Post, can I get access to a paid Apple WaPo podcast channel without paying again? is there any way to give subscribers access outside of Apple Podcasts – such as in the publisher’s own applications? There is good information about the mechanics of the subscription here and here.)

The most obvious beneficiary of this model is Luminary, the paid podcast subscription app that did a good job, but struggled to find an audience. Putting a light channel in Apple podcasts should do wonders for visibility and discovery. (Luminary will offer the same monthly rate in its app and Apple Podcasts – $ 5.99 – but keeps its annual rate of $ 34.99 for its own app.) But Luminary’s meh performance was probably a warning story for anyone. he wanted Apple to launch an “Apple Podcasts + Subscription.” People are excited about shows, hosts, topics, and they are very individual; it is difficult to understand the value proposition when gathering shows of genres, formats and audience segments.

The best-positioned news editor here could be NPR, the country’s largest producer of popular shows. Our old friend Nick Quah has the scoop (and for long-time NPR observers it’s pretty massive):

I will be very curious to hear how the predominant member positions on NPR’s board of directors feel about a network-paid “public radio podcast subscription service” – something to which there is major resistance. Apple’s press release includes a screenshot of NPR’s Code Switch with a show-based pitch: “Support bold conversations on the race, without sponsors,” for $ 2.99 a month.

Setting up paid podcast subscriptions has been possible for a long time, but it was a real pain to manage things like bonus content, free trials, and other subscription basics in an easy-to-use way. Apple can solve a lot of those problems with the movement of a switch and can trade the hell out of paid shows. (And now he will have a reason to – 30% discount.)

Flipside, of course, is that openness has been one of the best features of podcasting as long as it has existed. Anyone can start a podcast anywhere, and listeners can find them in any podcast app they like. One of the most prominent advocates for this open view of the podcast was PRX and RadioPublic co-founder Jake Shapiro, who wrote about it here in 2019:

There is a trend in the industry to generate money and more direct involvement of the listener. This includes crowdfunding, membership, types and donations, as well as exclusive and premium content …

[The need for subscriber authentication] introduces obstacles and opportunities for industry. There is a risk that podcasting applications will become the default identity brokers and authenticated access to podcasting. In other words, as a listener, you may need to install five different apps to get all your favorite shows exclusively on one platform and copy / paste private feed URLs to access others.

More problematically, podcasts may be blocked from a direct relationship with their true fans, relegated to the role of content provider on the platforms that control their experience. Finally, listeners are required to trade control and confidentiality for access and participation.

Apple, Google, Spotify, and perhaps other new entrants could “solve” this on a scale, leading a dominant platform-based identity layer and their own monetization approach, as they have done in other markets (along with Facebook, Amazon and Netflix) …

But at the logical extreme, application-based identity results in either the hegemony of the winning platform or the subsequent fragmentation of podcast distribution, discovery, and monetization. At a time when the podcast continues to reach new audiences and diversify its business models, this type of package has a cost to grow the podcast.

I was wondering what Jake thought about today’s potential shift to application-based identity and the hegemony of the winners’ platform. But then I remembered Apple …hired him a few months ago be the leader of its podcast partnerships! So, yes, he likes it!

Seriously, however, with someone like Jake in a leadership position, I am much more optimistic that the partnership decisions made in Cupertino will be good for the wider field. (Can PodPass sneak in there?) Still … 30 percent is a big discount, and the Apple slice could have a real impact on the pricing and marketing decisions that podcast publishers have to make.

So Apple will pay. Spotify is testing paid subscriptions for each show right now. Will their paid catalogs be largely mirror images – such as, say, iOS and Android app stores, where big apps feel compelled to be in both? Or will they evolve into two gardens with very distinct walls, each with its own exclusivity and special offers?

But Google and Amazon, each with its own dominant platform (Android, Echo) from which to experiment? Will there still be market share to distribute for Pocket Casts, Outcasts, Castros and other independent or third-party podcast applications? Do off-platform subscription services, such as Stitcher Premium, have a viable standalone path forward? And how many people really want to pay for a podcast anyway?

Can the benevolent gentleman of podcasting become a profit center without losing his soul? Consider it a good teaser for the next episode.

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