Rumors abound that Apple is to launch a Podcasts+ subscription service to compete with Spotify. In his latest Vulture column, Hot Pod’s Hot Pod‘s Nick Quah looked at whether he should and highlighted some difficulties that the company may come across.
You have to start with the reality that nobody’s really figured out a Netflix-esque paid subscription service for podcasting just yet, which is another way of saying that audiences haven’t sufficiently expressed interest in that kind of relationship with podcasts … or that audiences haven’t been sufficiently conditioned to want to pay for a service that would serve them podcast-like experiences. For all intents and purposes, Luminary went nowhere, notable only for its achievements in raising investment money and driving headlines. Meanwhile, other examples that can be evoked — whether it’s Stitcher Premium or Quake Media — seem largely limited in their respective achievements. We simply haven’t seen meaningful efforts at a true podcast equivalent to Netflix or even something more genre-specific like Crunchyroll, Shudder, or the Criterion Channel.
