We’ve talked about it a fair amount here over the past few months – the rumoured plan for Apple to introduce pay-options for podcasts in Apple Podcasts, and, well, it’s finally here. At the top of yesterday’s Keynote, Apple CEO Tim Cook dedicated 78 seconds to revealing the new features.
I mention the time partly to be mean, but also to point out the revenues of Apple’s hardware and services business are huge cash generators and no matter how important audio is to us, the big boys have much bigger fish to fry. What they’re introducing today in Apple Podcasts is eminently sensible, pretty well thought out and a great opportunity for some creators, but the reason it’s taken so long is that Apple have always had a better way to make a wheelbarrow load of dollars.
What’s spurred this on now? I imagine it’s the huge competition that they face in the audio space, and a need to reenforce podcast consumption on the iPhone and their other devices when Spotify is running amok in the sector.