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If you’re a hobbyist, you might go “oh no, this won’t work out, Overcast users can’t see my podcast” and switch hosting providers. If you’re going into podcast

by SllX 4y ago

If you’re a hobbyist, you might go “oh no, this won’t work out, Overcast users can’t see my podcast” and switch hosting providers. If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really that simple. This service costs this much and has these limitations, that service costs more but doesn’t have those limitations. So yeah, when you sign a service agreement, expect only exactly what the service offers in the agreement, and if the terms are not satisfactory, go sign with someone else. What is the issue? If I can’t find someone’s podcast in Overcast, I’m simply never going to consider even listening to it. Conversely, some podcasters are actually okay with that and would prefer to pay for cheaper hosting. That’s a valid choice for them to make too, but they are making a choice whether they pay attention to it or not. Also: just a note, this is only a hosting issue. You can still list your podcast in the iTunes Podcast Directory (or whatever it’s called now) without hosting on Apple’s servers.

bastawhiz 4y ago
> expect only exactly what the service offers in the agreement, and if the terms are not satisfactory, go sign with someone else. You can't go somewhere else, because going somewhere else means starting over from scratch. That's the whole point of my post: you're locked in. The customer who reached out with this issue has hundreds of episodes and can't reasonably manually reupload them all to another service.
- SllX 4y ago
  And that sucks for them, but it is also what the service is. It’s a cheap way to funnel people through the Podcasts app and generate more services revenue for Apple; you can’t even really call it a podcast host by any reasonable definition. Spotify’s service is about funneling people through the Spotify app to sell subscriptions and ads. YouTube’s service is basically the same. It’s a legitimate service that they signed up for that if you know what you’re getting into probably isn’t the worst deal. Total crap though for podcast listeners, and also if you didn’t check out the service before committing to it. Sorry for your prospective customer, hopefully your post helps keep others out of this lobster trap.
  - ryanbrunner 4y ago
    On the topic of subscriptions, Spotify does have an open ecosystem where purchasing a subscription through Spotify isn't necessarily purchasing a subscription through Anchor. With Apple, the only subscription you're buying is Apple's subscriptions and other platforms are completely locked out.
    - SllX 4y ago
      Well like I said above: > it’s because they’re trying to turn their Podcast app into YouTube for Podcasts with an App Store model which is just on its face total crap C’est la vie. I would give Spotify kudos but their own podcast foray is what caused me to quit them.
- TylerE 4y ago
  Isn’t that going to be pretty inevitable since we’re talking about subscription billing?
- greedo 4y ago
  If the user is having trouble migrating off Apple's hosting, they'd still have trouble migrating to a different host. Uploading hundreds of episodes and all the corresponding tagging/metadata is a pain no matter what.
janalsncm 4y ago
> If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really that simple. There’s a comedic version of this in I Think You Should Leave where a party planner hires an impersonator but fails to read the fine print that says the impersonator can hit anyone he wants to. The issue is that people who get into podcasting don’t know ahead of time that it will become a business. That’s not “skimping” on hiring a lawyer, that’s just going about life as any reasonable person does. I’m sure even Jesus himself wouldn’t have read all of the terms and conditions for every service he used.

by SllX 4y ago

bastawhiz 4y ago

> expect only exactly what the service offers in the agreement, and if the terms are not satisfactory, go sign with someone else. You can't go somewhere else, because going somewhere else means starting over from scratch. That's the whole point of my post: you're locked in. The customer who reached out with this issue has hundreds of episodes and can't reasonably manually reupload them all to another service.

SllX 4y ago
And that sucks for them, but it is also what the service is. It’s a cheap way to funnel people through the Podcasts app and generate more services revenue for Apple; you can’t even really call it a podcast host by any reasonable definition. Spotify’s service is about funneling people through the Spotify app to sell subscriptions and ads. YouTube’s service is basically the same. It’s a legitimate service that they signed up for that if you know what you’re getting into probably isn’t the worst deal. Total crap though for podcast listeners, and also if you didn’t check out the service before committing to it. Sorry for your prospective customer, hopefully your post helps keep others out of this lobster trap.
- ryanbrunner 4y ago
  On the topic of subscriptions, Spotify does have an open ecosystem where purchasing a subscription through Spotify isn't necessarily purchasing a subscription through Anchor. With Apple, the only subscription you're buying is Apple's subscriptions and other platforms are completely locked out.
  - SllX 4y ago
    Well like I said above: > it’s because they’re trying to turn their Podcast app into YouTube for Podcasts with an App Store model which is just on its face total crap C’est la vie. I would give Spotify kudos but their own podcast foray is what caused me to quit them.
TylerE 4y ago
Isn’t that going to be pretty inevitable since we’re talking about subscription billing?
greedo 4y ago
If the user is having trouble migrating off Apple's hosting, they'd still have trouble migrating to a different host. Uploading hundreds of episodes and all the corresponding tagging/metadata is a pain no matter what.

janalsncm 4y ago

> If you’re going into podcasting as a business, don’t skimp on having a lawyer review the things you’ll be signing up and paying for, and if you skimp on that and get unlucky, expect to be doing the work required to move providers if what you signed up for isn’t satisfactory. It’s really that simple. There’s a comedic version of this in I Think You Should Leave where a party planner hires an impersonator but fails to read the fine print that says the impersonator can hit anyone he wants to. The issue is that people who get into podcasting don’t know ahead of time that it will become a business. That’s not “skimping” on hiring a lawyer, that’s just going about life as any reasonable person does. I’m sure even Jesus himself wouldn’t have read all of the terms and conditions for every service he used.