Many of us watched the Apple event yesterday and we all noticed Apple make the announcement about Apple Podcast Subscriptions. Many people have talked about how this might be a big game-changer for the podcast world but really it’s about Apple playing catchup or at least taking podcast subscriptions mainstream.
I would like to point out that Spotify is in a different market. Spotify offers exclusives that are only available on their platform. The difference is Spotify exclusives are free to all who download the app you do not need to pay for Spotify Premium to listen to podcasts. For example, Joe Rogan’s show is still free you just have to go to Spotify to get it and have to use their app to listen to his show. The same goes for many others that Spotify owns.
Many companies have premium podcasts Relay.fm, Twit.TV and PodcastOne just to name a few. They offer a way to pay on their websites then offering a premium feed. Many podcast companies already offer the tools to make this happen like Podbean and Libsyn. Libsyn for years has been Adam Corolla’s hosting provider offering his Take A Knee podcast as a premium podcast.
The issue with these methods is they are cumbersome and require users to have technical knowledge. Now using Apple’s Podcast app even someone not very tech-savvy can subscribe to a premium podcast as easily as subscribing to Apple Music. While subscription-based podcasts are not new Apple may have opened the market up to users that otherwise before would never have subscribed by making the process simple and easy.
This new feature does come at a cost just like app developers you will need to give Apple 30% of your first-year fee and 15% a year after that plus pay the credit card fees which are around 2%. You will need to pay an additional $19.99 a year to publish your podcast. But think of this as a small podcaster or content creator. If you can get new subscribers and you make more than $20 a year in revenue the process paid for itself. The process opens you up to revenue you never had before and can continue to make going forward.