I'm assuming the answer is now, but that service is certainly pitching that they are the same medium/art form as those in the open space.
Stitcher does make at least some of their original content available as podcasts, which I think is great. Wolverine: The Long Night appears to be paid-only, but (for example) LeVar Burton Reads has a podcast.[1]
> …that service is certainly pitching that they are the same medium/art form as those in the open space.
It really looks that way. The domain for Wolverine: The Long Night is "wolverinepodcast.com", which to me says that Stitcher is intentionally leveraging podcasting's popularity to try and sell shows that aren't available as podcasts.
Considering that Stitcher was built on podcasting, I find this pretty distasteful.
Shoot, I hate to see technical folks genericize "podcasts" this way.
Podcasts are a great and popular standards-based medium for distributing audio and video on the open web.
Proprietary platforms like Spotify ingest a small percentage of the best podcasts and make that content available to their customers via their proprietary platform in order to increase the value of that platform.
The important bit is that the Spotify show isn't a podcast — no podcast app can play it. Spotify owns the listener relationship. They share stats with creators at their pleasure, if at all. It's a closed thing.
Apologies for what will seems like pedantry to some, but podcasting is the only open audio/video medium we've got.