Bloomberg:
Apple Inc. plans to fund original podcasts that would be exclusive to its audio service, according to people familiar with the matter, increasing its investment in the industry to keep competitors Spotify and Stitcher at bay.
Executives at the company have reached out to media companies and their representatives to discuss buying exclusive rights to podcasts, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the conversations are preliminary. Apple has yet to outline a clear strategy, but has said it plans to pursue the kind of deals it didn’t make before.
Slowly but surely, the podcast space is splintering, much like the video space.
In the video space, properties like Marvel, Pixar, Star Trek, Star Wars, The Office, Friends, etc., are all getting hidden behind walled gardens, like Disney+ and CBS Online.
Watch for podcasts to do the same over time. With funded podcasts outstripping indie podcasts that depend on withering advertising dollars, aggregating into well funded walled gardens.
To be clear, I’m not faulting anyone from going down this road. If this is true, seems a smart, competitive business move by Apple. More an observation that this particular evolution is as inevitable as the tides.
The problem is companies promising advertisers that they will monetize podcast listeners by tracking their use. I will never be a part of any podcast property that sees itself as monetizing our ears to promote advertising. I don’t mind fast forwarding through ads I’m not interested in if it means the advertisers are denied any information on me. I might even pay to have privacy, but not as a subscription. I know, I want too much. Coming from a newspaper background, we didn’t want to know whether an ad was seen or not on the editorial side, which is why journalists are an endangered species I suppose.
A large difference, though, is that most indie podcasts don’t have to cost a lot to make and so the dollars they need to attract aren’t large. The shows you talk about being put behind paywalls are all huge, known moneymakers that cost a lot to make in the first place.
I mean, you and Jim do a podcast and while I don’t know what your gear costs, I know that very good results can be had with nothing more than a couple of good mics, etc – under $500 or so – and you can start with even less. That’s an utterly different cost structure than even a low budget TV show.
Really, there’s nothing like podcasts in the video space aside perhaps from the Youtube folks who video themselves talking to the camera etc… which is really just a video podcast and which are also inexpensive to make unless the producer decides to do sets, etc.
Yes, things like This American Life cost a LOT more but those aren’t really podcasts… they’re radio shows using the format.