I assume they believe exclusive podcasts will gain them paying subscribers. Of course by fracturing the open ecosystem they may find themselves unable to acquire some podcasts, but given that they are a large player they are well positioned to out bid the competition.

They might also make a cut off of dynamic sponsorship/ad segments within podcasts.

These were quite eery the first time I heard them. I was listening to an episode of Conan O'Brien's podcast from early 2019 and in the middle was an ad (read by Conan) for enjoying Miller lite at home during the covid quarantine.

I spent a good 10 minutes trying to figure out what the hell had just happened until I found a page promoting Spotify's dynamic ad insertion for podcasts.

It's pretty annoying that I am paying for premium but still get dynamic ads inserted.

> podcasts (something people are used to getting for free with few or no ads)

This is an inaccurate assumption is how. Podcasts are audio adverts with interesting segments haha.

Ok maybe not that bad, but it's nowhere near 'few or no ads'

I listen to about ~15 podcasts. All of them have maybe a single 1-2min plug at the beginning, and maybe another at the end. All of them are about 30min or more.

I'd definitely qualify the worst case of 28 out of 30 minutes being actual content to be "few or no ads".

.. of your selection haha. There's a few more than ~15 podcasts out there these days.

Sure, it's obviously anecdotal. I still don't have any tangible example of podcasts being ad-ridden as a general rule...