Paul Morris·

Apple Considers Launching Podcast Subscription Service

According to insiders and people familiar with the matter, Cupertino-based Apple Inc. is considering adding a podcast subscription service to its ever-expanding offerings.

As per Bloomberg, the people involved have asked not to be identified due to the existence of nondisclosure agreements that prevents them from revealing details but Apple is said to be actively working with its partners to bring this podcast subscription service to its platforms during 2021.

Obviously, Apple already competes with the likes of Spotify with its Music streaming platform but the creation of a podcast subscription tier would thrust the two companies into closer competition.

Apple has held the lion’s share of podcast distribution over the last decade, predominantly due to the fact that the company does so for free and allows consumers to find, stream, and share podcasts without charge. Spotify and Amazon are also huge players in the podcast space and have managed to successfully monetize that side of things, According to the sources, Apple is facing pressure to try and introduce additional revenues from new services, thus reducing reliance on the sale of hardware.

It seems like the company sees the growing popularity of podcasts as one viable way of doing that. Little-to-no additional information is known at this time but it seems to make sense that any podcast streaming service would also be added to the Apple One bundle. Whether the cost of that bundle would increase is anyone’s guess but there is a possibility that Apple could have a flat rate and allow consumers to pick the services that they would make the most use of.

Other companies – such as Amazon and Spotify – have invested vast sums of money into podcasting over the last few years. Spotify, as an example, has managed to secure some extremely popular podcasts as exclusives to its platform, such as The Joe Rogan Experience. It will be extremely interesting to see how Apple tackles this project as the company tends not to get involved in selling advertisements and product placements, which is predominantly how podcasts tend to be monetized.

As soon as more information becomes available, we’ll let you know.

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