Evo Terra:
Apple's new paid-for podcasting announcement already has many skeptics.
Evo Terra:
But Apple has a successful playbook they can follow if they can change the
Evo Terra:
way podcasters think about podcasting.
Evo Terra:
Hello, and welcome to another Podcast Pontifications with me Evo Terra.
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For sixteen years now, Apple hasn't made any money from podcasting and it shows.
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How much time did Tim Apple spend on the announcement this week?
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One minute.
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One minute talking about Apple Podcasts, which, by the way, is a
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lot more than previous Apple events.
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Except for maybe when Steve announced it back in 2005, "iTunes
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4.7 will support podcasting."
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But now we have paid subscriptions and Apple is finally giving it the attention
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that I think, we all think, it deserves.
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It's this very nicely integrated payment option, right?
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People can subscribe right there.
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Listen to the same content.
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It's frictionless.
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It's going to be good.
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Maybe?
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We'll see how it works?
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Already there's been a lot of speculation out there as to why using Apple paid
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subscriptions is not quite as good as using other premium channels.
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And I understand those speculations around that and they are correct.
Evo Terra:
You get better connections when you use a different service provider because Apple
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will not be providing you personal details of the people who pay for your stuff.
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And all that's true, but I'm speculating Apple's purpose behind
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doing this is a little different.
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They're not just trying to take over the premium subscription.
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I don't think that's the case at all.
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I think Apple might actually be trying to replicate the success
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of the app store in podcasts.
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Let me tell you what I mean by that.
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So if we are seen by Apple and Apple wants us to see ourselves more as developers
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that put content in the app store, that can then be monetized, it kind of
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changes our brains just a little bit.
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Because we're no longer - don't think of us as publishers as in the way that people
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publish blogs and magazines and articles.
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Think of us as, again, developers who are putting content into an
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ecosystem that can then bring in some sort of revenue to the developer.
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That says all of the benefits we get from that ecosystem.
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What benefits might you wonder?
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Well, you may not know this podcaster, but we all talk about the discoverability
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problem of podcasting all day long.
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Well, app developers have the same thing.
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There's what, like five, ten million different apps in the app store?
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Finding one is a nightmare.
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Well, Apple's dev store has a paid feature called Apple Search Ads so that when
Evo Terra:
someone is searching in the app store for certain keywords, then your app,
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someone's app's going to come up first.
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Paid listings and paid placement models.
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Would you pay to have your show come up first when someone searches
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for a relevant topic or keyword?
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Maybe you wouldn't, but I can guarantee you a lot of other podcasters will.
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Developers have different revenue models than podcasters, right?
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And all of those different revenue models that developers get from Apple's store,
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give a cut back to the Apple Store.
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It happens, right?
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So if suddenly our shows and our episodes are apps, we have those same
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monetization options available to us.
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Monetization options that Apple is very good at cranking up.
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Because every time a developer makes more money with their app, Apple
Evo Terra:
makes more money with their app.
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So there is a vested interest in Apple promoting the shows that bring in the
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highest levels of income, whether that's from straight revenue from subscriptions
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or whether it's something else that are available to the app developers.
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I'm talking advertising here.
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$15.8 billion.
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$15.8 billion is how much revenue Apple made the first quarter of
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this year on services, not hardware.
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Services means Apple Music, Apple TV+, iCloud, the app store.
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It's projected that they're going to make $89 billion annually just in a
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couple of years, 2025, and podcasts aren't a part of that equation.
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They're not a part of that revenue model or they weren't, or they
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won't be until May of 2021.
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After that, suddenly Apple has a vested interest in making
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podcasting make lots of money.
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There's a misconception out there that every attempt to paywall podcasting
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content has failed, but that's not true.
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A lot of them have fizzled and yes, some have failed, but some still
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struggle on with a small base of people who are willing to pay.
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But none of them have been Apple.
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And Apple already has a well-defined, very smooth, well-established buying
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relationship, commerce relationship between them in the middle, and
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developers on one side, and people who want to download content on the other.
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That's an easy place for podcasting to fit into.
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Just takes a little bit of a paradigm shift, I think, on
Evo Terra:
our part to think about it.
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Now, Apple is not having an easy time with this rollout.
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It has been rough.
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They are getting beat up because - it's bad.
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It's not great, right?
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But here's the thing, it's going to work.
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Apple will get the kinks worked out of this, I promise.
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Probably in the next few days.
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So I recommend to you that you start reading up.
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Yes, I'm sure you've read plenty of opinion pieces already, but Apple has
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some really good info pages, which detail exactly what it is you can do with this.
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So carve out an hour of your time and go read that and see if it doesn't
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read like they're talking to developers more than podcasters in there, as well.
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Now as always, I find these deliberations work a lot better with friends.
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I had a great conversation with some friends about this yesterday.
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I suggest you share a link to this episode to a friend and then schedule
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a call so you can all talk about what you think you want to do.
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Cause there are a lot of options.
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It's not just do you want money or not.
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There's more to it than that.
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So go take some time, read up, and learn.
Evo Terra:
And because you can't yet pay me to subscribe to my podcast
Evo Terra:
on Apple Podcasts, you can still go to buymeacoffee.com/evoterra
Evo Terra:
and show me some love that way.
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What an interesting week.
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Plenty of time to read.
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Carve some time out of the weekend for it.
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Because I shall be back on Monday with yet another Podcast Pontifications.
