Alex Guyot, writing for MacStories:

Podcast creators can participate in the service for $19.99/year, and can use the redesigned Apple Podcasts Connect website to manage their subscription offerings. […]

While the integration into Apple’s ecosystem means users can easily subscribe using their existing App Store accounts, it also means that Apple will be taking its usual 30% of revenue from podcast creators. This will drop to 15% after the first year, the same way it does for in-app purchases.

Apple has been an excellent steward for podcasting. They’ve maintained the biggest and most important directory of shows without ever receive a cent for it. But now that’s changing. They’re taking a flourishing, open platform and attaching a subscription component to it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to for-pay shows, I’ve happily paid for several subscription shows throughout the years. But I don’t want Apple to do to podcasts what YouTube did to user-generated video.

What if, instead of integrating a subscription system into their podcasts app that’s built on Apple’s proprietary systems, they introduced an improvement to podcasting that was free and open to developers. A better mechanism for consuming and publishing password protected feeds and a streamlined way for listeners to pay creators directly. Something that developers up and down the entire stack could implement and benefit from, completely independent from Apple.

➝ Source: macstories.net