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Reading this, I get the impression that someone at Apple tried to do the market capture playbook tactics (churn prevention, competitor lockout, first-party-favo

Reading this, I get the impression that someone at Apple tried to do the market capture playbook tactics (churn prevention, competitor lockout, first-party-favoritism) in an open world (podcasts). Obviously it doesn’t work, while eroding the underlying ecosystem. The smart move by Apple is to keep podcasts open, keep being the de facto provider, don’t bother making money from it now, and use it as a foot-in-the-door as the web evolves for future plays.

jrochkind1 4y ago
> keep being the de facto provider, They are already in the process of losing that. > Spotify overtook Apple Podcasts as the biggest US podcast platform in 2021, when the Swedish company drew 28.3 million monthly US podcast listeners, about 200,000 more than its rival did. — https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/spotify-apple-podcasts-controversy https://www.insiderintelligence.com/content/spotify-apple-po... Spotify, with it's own walled garden podcasts without RSS feeds, that can only be listened to with spotify app. There is definitely something going on in podcasts, and it's bigger than Apple. Maybe Apple could resist it by trying to keep podcasts open, like you suggest? Or maybe they'd just go down with the ship? Apple is clearly trying to beat Spotify at the walled garden game though, not try to figure out how to make money from openness. The walled garden game (and the analytics and ad placement you get from having more control of podcasts than just supplying RSS feeds to them) are way more profitable for the central platforms -- if not for the podcast producers, and who even cares about the podcast listeners?
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