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.

> 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.

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.