Apple's real in podcasting


There was an interesting New York Times article about an apparent meeting at Apple with some large podcast producers. Essentially it seems a meet and greet on how Apple could better help the business side of podcasting.

Marco Arment has a take that would fall under be careful what you as for.

Big podcasters also apparently want Apple to insert itself as a financial intermediary to allow payment for podcasts within Apple's app. We've seen how that goes. Trust me, podcasters, you don't want that.

It would not only add rules, restrictions, delays, and big commissions, but it would increase Apple's dominant role in podcasts, push out diversity, give Apple far more control than before, and potentially destroy one of the web's last open media ecosystems.

Since Apple seems to be stepping away from the advertising business, I'm not sure there are a lot of opportunities for monetization. Promotion for increased subscriptions and traffic, however, seem a bigger prize.

I think there's a lot of room for improvement with discovery in the podcast directory. Apple apparently puts a lot of effort into curating podcasts, but I'd be interesting in seeing an organic component for discovery. For example, if a group of people share a number of subscriptions, recommend podcasts not shared. It's seems reasonable if I like some podcasts that others like, I may be interested in similar podcasts they like, for example.