Charlotte Henry

Apple announced subscription podcasts and an overhaul of its app at the recent ‘Spring Loaded’ event. Longtime podcaster Jason Snell looked at the good, and bad, of the new offering at Six Colors.

The most important feature of Apple Podcasts Subscriptions is that it meets people where they live. Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned in more than a decade of podcasting is that for all your presence on the web, on social media, in email, or in private communication channels like Slack and Discord, the single best place to reach podcast listeners is via the podcast. Not everyone does Facebook or Twitter or visit your website, but the entire podcast audience is listening to the podcast… Podcasting is an industry driven by feeds, which automatically deliver content to listeners. But Apple Podcasts Subscriptions doesn’t support delivery of content via a feed—instead, all the subscriber-only content has to be manually uploaded to Apple’s servers via a web form. This is onerous on its own (now you’re using two different podcast management systems instead of one), but of course Spotify, Google, and others will announce their own plans and now you’re required to post the same content in a half-dozen different places.