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Apple’s attempt at podcast subscriptions is off to a messy start
Subscriptions are difficult – doubly so when you’re selling them for a medium that traditionally has been free to access. But that doesn’t excuse the hash Apple has made of its podcast subs tools to date, as this article for The Verge makes very clear.
“Worse than bugs, however, podcasters say the subscription push comes with a new labor cost that not all of them can afford to address. The promise of RSS was a centralized place to publish to all podcasting platforms; however, with this new subscription product, as well as other platforms, podcasters now have to publish in a variety of places and manage various backends — a particularly arduous task for small teams.”
We’re not saying there’s no way back for Apple from here. It still has a sizeable presence when it comes to podcasting via Apple Podcast Connect. But it’s certainly not approaching podcast subscriptions from the perspective of the podcasters, and given that investment in podcasting is ramping up across the board, these missteps will allow its rivals to catch up and overtake it.
‘I try not to have an endgame’: Future CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne on Dennis buyout, growth strategy and having a ‘global mindset’
Yesterday you read my potted history of Future’s acquisitions over the past five years and what they say about its future. This morning, Press Gazette profile Future’s CEO Zillah Byng-Thorne about how she sees Future’s past, present, and… well, you know.
Gawker returns for unknown length of time
New York Magazine has taken a snarky look at the new Gawker, asking what (if any) relation it bears to its first, most famous iteration. It includes this sentence, which is all too familiar to anyone working in digital media: “one thing the staff of new Gawker share with almost all of us who have gone before is a sense of a limited future — that either one will be fired or the publication will cease to exist.”
From the top down, and inside out: tackling media’s diversity problem
Friend of Media Voices Michelle Manafy has taken a look at how much progress various media organisations have made in tackling their diversity issues. There are tech solutions, culture solutions… but it’s very obvious that the underlying problem still remains.
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