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Behnam Norouzi

Apple delays paid podcast launch; admits problems

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This article is at least a year old

  • In an email to podcasters sent late on Friday before a holiday weekend, Apple Podcasts has announced that Apple Podcasts Paid Subscriptions and channels will now launch in June. The company’s original announcement had promised a May launch; we understand it is now planned to go live in the coming weeks.

  • In a first public statement, the email also admits that some creators 'have experienced delays’ in content availability and access to Apple Podcasts Connect, but claims these have been addressed. Publishers told Podnews on Friday that there continue to be many ongoing problems.

  • Meanwhile, Mumbler is a new podcast hosting platform, already live, “that allows any podcaster to create their own paid podcast in just 3 clicks”. Creators get to see their subscriber details; their commission fees are 8% plus payment costs.

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  • The Just Audio flutter package, which is a feature-rich audio player for your podcast app, has added a silence skipper and a volume boost for Android. (iOS to follow). More details here.
  • Brian of London writes an article on why podcast apps and aggregators should be using Podping. Podping is now in live beta with Buzzsprout, RSS․com, Captivate and Transistor.
  • Last week, Anchor hoovered up plenty of paid-for podcasts, but also lost plenty too, according to our sample. SoundCloud was the biggest loser, with 20 losses; Megaphone was the paid podcast host gaining the most shows.
  • The Podcast Index data shows that Anchor + Megaphone host 1,603,876 podcasts out of 3,869,347 podcasts available: their owner, Spotify, now hosting 41.4% of all shows.

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Companies mentioned above:
Anchor logoAnchorApple logoAppleApple Podcasts logoApple PodcastsBuzzsprout logoBuzzsproutCaptivate logoCaptivateMegaphone logoMegaphonePodcast Index logoPodcast IndexSoundCloud logoSoundCloudSpotify logoSpotifyTransistor logoTransistorVeritonic logoVeritonic

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