The news publisher best positioned here might be NPR, the nation’s top producer of popular shows. People get excited about shows, about hosts, about topics, and those are very individual it’s hard to get the value proposition right when you’re lumping together shows across genres, formats, and audiences. (Luminary will offer the same monthly rate in its app and in Apple Podcasts - $5.99 - but keep its $34.99 annual rate for its own app.) But Luminary’s meh performance was probably also a cautionary tale for anyone who wanted Apple to launch a unitary “Apple Podcasts+” subscription. Putting a Luminary channel inside Apple Podcasts should do wonders for visibility and discovery. The most obvious beneficiary of this model is Luminary, the paid podcast subscription app that has done good work but struggled to find an audience. For instance, if I’m a paying Washington Post subscriber, can I get access to an Apple WaPo paid podcast channel without paying again? Will there be any way to give subscribers access outside of Apple Podcasts - like in the publisher’s own apps? There’s good info on the subscription mechanics here and here.) (It’s not clear to me yet how well those channels will play with publishers’ existing off-podcast subscriptions. For instance, a news site could offer a daily news podcast, a weekly opinion show, and an interview show and group them together under a single paid subscription. Perhaps most interestingly, Apple is allowing podcast publishers to create “channels” that bring together multiple shows under a single banner. Awkward to use “subscribe” to describe both the paid and unpaid things you do with a show.) It also closely resembles how Apple handles “Channels” on Apple TV.

(Having a paid-subscription model probably made it more urgent for Apple to change what it used to call “subscribing” to a podcast to “following” a podcast. That 30/15 is the same cut Apple takes for in-app subscriptions. It appears that content creators will have to pay Apple $19.99 per year in order to offer subscriptions, and Apple will take 30 percent of revenue for the first year and 15 percent for the years following. Initial partners include Pushkin Industries, QCODE, and NPR. It’ll launch in 170 regions and countries next month. During its spring event today, the company announced that people will be able to subscribe to content from the app for extra perks, like ad-free and bonus content, as well as early access. Here’s The Verge:Ī monumental change is coming to Apple Podcasts’ business: the company is launching subscriptions within the Apple Podcasts app. But some will cost money, and Apple will take a cut. Most of them will remain free, supported by ads sold by their creators. Through it all, Apple has mostly avoided making money off the app - leading some podcasters to thank their benevolent overlord and others to wonder if that meant Apple’s interest in the space was waning.Īt today’s “Spring Loaded” event, Apple announced that it wanted to make money off of podcasts in pretty much the same way it makes money off of apps. 1 way to listen to podcasts - a title it still holds by most accounts, though Spotify is breathing down its neck. While that app leaves a lot to be desired, it was instantly the No. Podcasting’s first boom in 2005 came when Apple added podcast support to iTunes, and its second boom nearly a decade later came when it preinstalled its Podcasts app on every iPhone. (What did you think the “ pod” stands for?) Apple has finally made its long-awaited move into monetizing podcasting, the medium it kinda-sorta invented and definitely brought to a mainstream audience.

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