Yah. I'm baffled by this. Absolutely baffled. You set up a site, any site, make an RSS feed, and we all had aggregators that polled and downloaded new episodes. This system was working fantastically. Why is this even happening?!
People who aren't independently wealthy have to get paid to continue producing content. It's pretty straightforward as a concept. Patronage of the arts has been a thing for thousands of years.
Independent wealth isn't a factor. Here's an example podcast that is deeply niche: https://newrustacean.com/ He found actual sponsors, and patreon donators.
Are you thinking along the lines of people who make the podcast their full time jobs? Do you think the likelyhood of accomplishing this will be easier or harder for a given aspiring podcaster once a middleman controls their revenue, ability to distribute, and context of listening?
And honestly, I don't know the answer to that, all I know that is my experience is going to end up massively worse if authors keep choosing centralization.
Re:Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
by pilsetnieks on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @09:47AM
(#26889622)
> patreon donators
> once a middleman controls their revenue, ability to distribute
Patreon already is their middleman that controls their revenue and ability to distribute premium content.
Can we think of Apple's podcasting ecosystem as similar to paterons? Or can we assume that Apple is looking to wall the garden in, locking everyone to their context, to extract maximum rents because users can't leave. There is some history there.
Re:Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
by ryanbrunner on Wednesday April 21, 2021 @11:51AM
(#26891259)
Patreon is relatively hands off with content though. They do absolutely own the financial relationship with your customers, but their podcast support is still just an RSS feed that can be played anywhere that supports adding by feed.
Who says that won’t continue to be the case? This is just an easy way for the podcaster to make money without advertising. I’d happily support the 1-2 podcasts I religiously consume to get rid of ads.
Agreed to this, I’d rather pay up front than let corporations brainwash me with advertisements. So incredibly dystopian.
Re:Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
by post_break on Tuesday April 20, 2021 @04:11PM
(#26880882)
Apple really likes pumping up the services revenue, and what better way to do so than get 30% (or 15% after one year) of podcasting fees.
With this and what Spotify is doing I foresee a future where podcasts are like streaming video: siloed across dozens of incredibly mediocre applications. Hopefully this doesn't lead to the locking down of the Apple Podcast Directory, which I believe is still the de facto standard source for most podcasts.